Theoretical and computational approaches on heterogeneous nucleation

Nucleation is the first step of a first order phase transition. A new phase is always sprung up in nucleation phenomena. The two main categories of nucleation are homogeneous nucleation, where the new phase is formed in a uniform substance, and heterogeneous nucleation, when nucleation occurs on a pre-existing surface. In this thesis the main attention is paid on heterogeneous nucleation. This thesis wields the nucleation phenomena from two theoretical perspectives: the classical nucleation theory and the statistical mechanical approach. The formulation of the classical nucleation theory relies on equilibrium thermodynamics and use of macroscopically determined quantities to describe the properties of small nuclei, sometimes consisting of just a few molecules. The statistical mechanical approach is based on interactions between single molecules, and does not bear the same assumptions as the classical theory. This work gathers up the present theoretical knowledge of heterogeneous nucleation and utilizes it in computational model studies. A new exact molecular approach on heterogeneous nucleation was introduced and tested by Monte Carlo simulations. The results obtained from the molecular simulations were interpreted by means of the concepts of the classical nucleation theory. Numerical calculations were carried out for a variety of substances nucleating on different substances. The classical theory of heterogeneous nucleation was employed in calculations of one-component nucleation of water on newsprint paper, Teflon and cellulose film, and binary nucleation of water-n-propanol and water-sulphuric acid mixtures on silver nanoparticles. The results were compared with experimental results. The molecular simulation studies involved homogeneous nucleation of argon and heterogeneous nucleation of argon on a planar platinum surface. It was found out that the use of a microscopical contact angle as a fitting parameter in calculations based on the classical theory of heterogeneous nucleation leads to a fair agreement between the theoretical predictions and experimental results. In the presented cases the microscopical angle was found to be always smaller than the contact angle obtained from macroscopical measurements. Furthermore, molecular Monte Carlo simulations revealed that the concept of the geometrical contact parameter in heterogeneous nucleation calculations can work surprisingly well even for very small clusters.

University Students' Approaches to Learning, Self-Regulation, and Cognitive and Attributional Strategies : Connections with Well-Being and Academic Success

This dissertation empirically explores the relations among three theoretical perspectives: university students approaches to learning, self-regulated learning, as well as cognitive and attributional strategies. The relations were quantitatively studied from both variable- and person-centered perspectives. In addition, the meaning that students gave to their disciplinary choices was examined. The general research questions of the study were: 1) What kinds of relationships exist among approaches to learning, regulation of learning, and cognitive and attributional strategies? What kinds of cognitive-motivational profiles can be identified among university students, and how are such profiles related to study success and well-being? 3) How do university students explain their disciplinary choices? Four empirical studies addressed these questions. Studies I, II, and III were quantitative, applying self-report questionnaires, and Study IV was qualitative in nature. Study I explored relations among cognitive strategies, approaches to learning, regulation of learning, and study success by using correlations and a K-means cluster analysis. The participants were 366 students from various faculties at different phases of their studies. The results showed that all the measured constructs were logically related to each other in both variable- and person-centered approaches. Study II further examined what kinds of cognitive-motivational profiles could be identified among first-year university students (n=436) in arts, law, and agriculture and forestry. Differences in terms of study success, exhaustion, and stress among students with differing profiles were also looked at. By using a latent class cluster analysis (LCCA), three groups of students were identified: non-academic (34%), self-directed (35%), and helpless students (31%). Helpless students reported the highest levels of stress and exhaustion. Self-directed students received the highest grades. In Study III, cognitive-motivational profiles were identified among novice teacher students (n=213) using LCCA. Well-being, epistemological beliefs, and study success were looked at in relation to the profiles. Three groups of students were found: non-regulating (50%), self-directed (35%), and non-reflective (22%). Self-directed students again received the best grades. Non-regulating students reported the highest levels of stress and exhaustion, the lowest level of interest, and showed the strongest preference for certain and practical knowledge. Study IV, which was qualitative in nature, explored how first-year students (n = 536 ) in three fields of studies, arts, law, and veterinary medicine explained their disciplinary choices. Content analyses showed that interest appeared to be a common concept in students description of their choices across the three faculties. However, the objects of interest of the freshmen appeared rather unspecified. Veterinary medicine and law students most often referred to future work or a profession, whereas only one-fifth of the arts students did so. The dissertation showed that combining different theoretical perspectives and methodologies enabled us to build a rich picture of university students cognitive and motivational predispositions towards studying and learning. Further, cognitive-emotional aspects played a significant role in studying, not only in relation to study success, but also in terms of well-being. Keywords: approaches to learning, self-regulation, cognitive and attributional strategies, university students

Novel Approaches to the Sampling of Atmospheric Aerosols and Determination of Chemical Composition

The Earth s climate is a highly dynamic and complex system in which atmospheric aerosols have been increasingly recognized to play a key role. Aerosol particles affect the climate through a multitude of processes, directly by absorbing and reflecting radiation and indirectly by changing the properties of clouds. Because of the complexity, quantification of the effects of aerosols continues to be a highly uncertain science. Better understanding of the effects of aerosols requires more information on aerosol chemistry. Before the determination of aerosol chemical composition by the various available analytical techniques, aerosol particles must be reliably sampled and prepared. Indeed, sampling is one of the most challenging steps in aerosol studies, since all available sampling techniques harbor drawbacks. In this study, novel methodologies were developed for sampling and determination of the chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols. In the particle-into-liquid sampler (PILS), aerosol particles grow in saturated water vapor with further impaction and dissolution in liquid water. Once in water, the aerosol sample can then be transported and analyzed by various off-line or on-line techniques. In this study, PILS was modified and the sampling procedure was optimized to obtain less altered aerosol samples with good time resolution. A combination of denuders with different coatings was tested to adsorb gas phase compounds before PILS. Mixtures of water with alcohols were introduced to increase the solubility of aerosols. Minimum sampling time required was determined by collecting samples off-line every hour and proceeding with liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The laboriousness of LLE followed by GC-MS analysis next prompted an evaluation of solid-phase extraction (SPE) for the extraction of aldehydes and acids in aerosol samples. These two compound groups are thought to be key for aerosol growth. Octadecylsilica, hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB), and mixed phase anion exchange (MAX) were tested as extraction materials. MAX proved to be efficient for acids, but no tested material offered sufficient adsorption for aldehydes. Thus, PILS samples were extracted only with MAX to guarantee good results for organic acids determined by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). On-line coupling of SPE with HPLC-MS is relatively easy, and here on-line coupling of PILS with HPLC-MS through the SPE trap produced some interesting data on relevant acids in atmospheric aerosol samples. A completely different approach to aerosol sampling, namely, differential mobility analyzer (DMA)-assisted filter sampling, was employed in this study to provide information about the size dependent chemical composition of aerosols and understanding of the processes driving aerosol growth from nano-size clusters to climatically relevant particles (>40 nm). The DMA was set to sample particles with diameters of 50, 40, and 30 nm and aerosols were collected on teflon or quartz fiber filters. To clarify the gas-phase contribution, zero gas-phase samples were collected by switching off the DMA every other 15 minutes. Gas-phase compounds were adsorbed equally well on both types of filter, and were found to contribute significantly to the total compound mass. Gas-phase adsorption is especially significant during the collection of nanometer-size aerosols and needs always to be taken into account. Other aims of this study were to determine the oxidation products of β-caryophyllene (the major sesquiterpene in boreal forest) in aerosol particles. Since reference compounds are needed for verification of the accuracy of analytical measurements, three oxidation products of β-caryophyllene were synthesized: β-caryophyllene aldehyde, β-nocaryophyllene aldehyde, and β-caryophyllinic acid. All three were identified for the first time in ambient aerosol samples, at relatively high concentrations, and their contribution to the aerosol mass (and probably growth) was concluded to be significant. Methodological and instrumental developments presented in this work enable fuller understanding of the processes behind biogenic aerosol formation and provide new tools for more precise determination of biosphere-atmosphere interactions.

New computational approaches for inelastic x-ray scattering

Inelastic x-ray scattering spectroscopy is a versatile experimental technique for probing the electronic structure of materials. It provides a wealth of information on the sample's atomic-scale structure, but extracting this information from the experimental data can be challenging because there is no direct relation between the structure and the measured spectrum. Theoretical calculations can bridge this gap by explaining the structural origins of the spectral features. Reliable methods for modeling inelastic x-ray scattering require accurate electronic structure calculations. This work presents the development and implementation of new schemes for modeling the inelastic scattering of x-rays from non-periodic systems. The methods are based on density functional theory and are applicable for a wide variety of molecular materials. Applications are presented in this work for amorphous silicon monoxide and several gas phase systems. Valuable new information on their structure and properties could be extracted with the combination of experimental and computational methods.

Properties of Toeplitz operators on analytic function spaces : from function symbols to distributions

Toeplitz operators are among the most important classes of concrete operators with applications to several branches of pure and applied mathematics. This doctoral thesis deals with Toeplitz operators on analytic Bergman, Bloch and Fock spaces. Usually, a Toeplitz operator is a composition of multiplication by a function and a suitable projection. The present work deals with generalizing the notion to the case where the function is replaced by a distributional symbol. Fredholm theory for Toeplitz operators with matrix-valued symbols is also considered. The subject of this thesis belongs to the areas of complex analysis, functional analysis and operator theory. This work contains five research articles. The articles one, three and four deal with finding suitable distributional classes in Bergman, Fock and Bloch spaces, respectively. In each case the symbol class to be considered turns out to be a certain weighted Sobolev-type space of distributions. The Bergman space setting is the most straightforward. When dealing with Fock spaces, some difficulties arise due to unboundedness of the complex plane and the properties of the Gaussian measure in the definition. In the Bloch-type spaces an additional logarithmic weight must be introduced. Sufficient conditions for boundedness and compactness are derived. The article two contains a portion showing that under additional assumptions, the condition for Bergman spaces is also necessary. The fifth article deals with Fredholm theory for Toeplitz operators having matrix-valued symbols. The essential spectra and index theorems are obtained with the help of Hardy space factorization and the Berezin transform, for instance. The article two also has a part dealing with matrix-valued symbols in a non-reflexive Bergman space, in which case a condition on the oscillation of the symbol (a logarithmic VMO-condition) must be added.

Process Analytical Technology Approach on Fluid Bed Granulation and Drying : Identifying Critical Relationships and Constructing the Design Space

Fluid bed granulation is a key pharmaceutical process which improves many of the powder properties for tablet compression. Dry mixing, wetting and drying phases are included in the fluid bed granulation process. Granules of high quality can be obtained by understanding and controlling the critical process parameters by timely measurements. Physical process measurements and particle size data of a fluid bed granulator that are analysed in an integrated manner are included in process analytical technologies (PAT). Recent regulatory guidelines strongly encourage the pharmaceutical industry to apply scientific and risk management approaches to the development of a product and its manufacturing process. The aim of this study was to utilise PAT tools to increase the process understanding of fluid bed granulation and drying. Inlet air humidity levels and granulation liquid feed affect powder moisture during fluid bed granulation. Moisture influences on many process, granule and tablet qualities. The approach in this thesis was to identify sources of variation that are mainly related to moisture. The aim was to determine correlations and relationships, and utilise the PAT and design space concepts for the fluid bed granulation and drying. Monitoring the material behaviour in a fluidised bed has traditionally relied on the observational ability and experience of an operator. There has been a lack of good criteria for characterising material behaviour during spraying and drying phases, even though the entire performance of a process and end product quality are dependent on it. The granules were produced in an instrumented bench-scale Glatt WSG5 fluid bed granulator. The effect of inlet air humidity and granulation liquid feed on the temperature measurements at different locations of a fluid bed granulator system were determined. This revealed dynamic changes in the measurements and enabled finding the most optimal sites for process control. The moisture originating from the granulation liquid and inlet air affected the temperature of the mass and pressure difference over granules. Moreover, the effects of inlet air humidity and granulation liquid feed rate on granule size were evaluated and compensatory techniques used to optimize particle size. Various end-point indication techniques of drying were compared. The ∆T method, which is based on thermodynamic principles, eliminated the effects of humidity variations and resulted in the most precise estimation of the drying end-point. The influence of fluidisation behaviour on drying end-point detection was determined. The feasibility of the ∆T method and thus the similarities of end-point moisture contents were found to be dependent on the variation in fluidisation between manufacturing batches. A novel parameter that describes behaviour of material in a fluid bed was developed. Flow rate of the process air and turbine fan speed were used to calculate this parameter and it was compared to the fluidisation behaviour and the particle size results. The design space process trajectories for smooth fluidisation based on the fluidisation parameters were determined. With this design space it is possible to avoid excessive fluidisation and improper fluidisation and bed collapse. Furthermore, various process phenomena and failure modes were observed with the in-line particle size analyser. Both rapid increase and a decrease in granule size could be monitored in a timely manner. The fluidisation parameter and the pressure difference over filters were also discovered to express particle size when the granules had been formed. The various physical parameters evaluated in this thesis give valuable information of fluid bed process performance and increase the process understanding.

Lebanese Plants and Plant-Derived Compounds Against Colon Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a major health concern and demands long-term efforts in developing strategies for screening and prevention. CRC has become a preventable disease as a consequence of a better understanding of colorectal carcinogenesis. However, current therapy is unsatisfactory and necessitates the exploration of other approaches for the prevention and treatment of cancer. Plant based products have been recognized as preventive with regard to the development of colon cancer. Therefore, the potential chemopreventive use and mechanism of action of Lebanese natural product were evaluated. Towards this aim the antitumor activity of Onopordum cynarocephalum and Centaurea ainetensis has been studied using in vitro and in vivo models. In vitro, both crude extracts were non cytotoxic to normal intestinal cells and inhibited the proliferation of colon cancer cells in a dose-dependent manner. In vivo, both crude extracts reduced the number of tumors by an average of 65% at weeks 20 (adenomas stage) and 30 (adenocarcinomas stage). The activity of the C. ainetensis extract was attributed to Salograviolide A, a guaianolide-type sesquiterpene lactone, which was isolated and identified through bio-guided fractionation. The mechanism of action of thymoquinone (TQ), the active component of Nigella sativa, was established in colon cancer cells using in vitro models. By the use of N-acetyl cysteine, a radical scavenger, the direct involvement of reactive oxygen species in TQ-induced apoptotic cells was established. The analytical detection of TQ from spiked serum and its protein binding were evaluated. The average recovery of TQ from spiked serum subjected to several extraction procedures was 2.5% proving the inability of conventional methods to analyze TQ from serum. This has been explained by the extensive binding (>98%) of TQ to serum and major serum components such as bovine serum albumin (BSA) and alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP). Using mass spectrometry analysis, TQ was confirmed to bind covalently to the free cysteine in position 34 and 147 of the amino acid sequence of BSA and AGP, respectively. The results of this work put at the disposal for future development new plants with anti-cancer activities and enhance the understanding of the pharmaceutical properties of TQ, a prerequisite for its future clinical development.

Disabled Revolutionary War Veterans and the Construction of Disability in the Early United States, c. 1776-1840

This thesis addresses the following broad research question: what did it mean to be a disabled Revolutionary War veteran in the early United States during the period from 1776 to roughly 1840? The study approaches the question from two angles: a state-centred one and an experiential one. In both cases, the theoretical framework employed comes from disability studies. Consequently, disability is regarded as a sociocultural phenomenon rather than a medical condition. The state-centred dimension of the study explores the meaning of disability and disabled veterans to the early American state through an examination of the major military pension laws of the period. An analysis of this legislation, particularly the invalid pension acts of 1793 and 1806, indicates that the early United States represents a key period in the development of the modern disability category. The experiential approach, in contrast, shifts the focus of attention away from the state towards the lived experiences of disabled veterans. It seeks to address the issue of whether or not the disabilities of disabled veterans had any significant material impact on their everyday lives. It does this through a comparison of the situation of 153 disabled veterans with that of an equivalent number of nondisabled veterans. The former group received invalid pensions while the latter did not. In comparing the material conditions of disabled and nondisabled veterans, a wide range of primary sources from military records to memoirs and letters are used. The most important sources in this regard are the pension application papers submitted by veterans in the early nineteenth century. These provide us with a unique insight into the everyday lives of veterans. Looking at the issue of experience through the window of the pension files reveals that there was not much difference in the broad contours of disabled and nondisabled veteran life. This finding has implications for the theorisation of disability that are highlighted and discussed in the thesis. The main themes covered in this study are: the wartime experiences of injured American soldiers, the military pension establishment of the early United States and the legal construction of disability, and the post-war working and family lives of disabled veterans. Keywords: disability, early America, veterans, military pensions, disabled people, Revolutionary War, United States, disability theory.

Text and Intensification of Its Impact in Chishti Samā`

In my master’s thesis I analyse mystical Islamic poetry in ritualistic performance context, samā` , focusing on the poetry used by the Chishti Sufis. The work is based on both literary sources and ethnographic material collected in India. The central textual source is Surūd-i Rūhānī, a compilation of mystical poetry. Textual sources, however, can be understood properly only in relation to the living performance context and therefore I also utilise interviews of Sufis and performers of mystical music and recordings of samā` assemblies along with texts. First part of the thesis concentrates on thematic overview of the poems and the process of selecting a suitable text for performance. The poems are written in three languages, viz. in Persian, Urdu and Hindi. Among the authors are both Sufis and non-Sufis. The poems, mystical and non-mystical alike, share the same poetic images and they acquire a mystical meaning when they are set to qawwali music and performed in samā` assemblies. My work includes several translations of verses not previously translated. Latter part of the thesis analyses the musical idiom of qawwali and the ways in which the impact of text on listeners is intensified in performance. Typically the intensification is accomplished in the level of a single poem through three different techniques: using introductory verses, inserting verses between the verses of the main poem and repeating individual units of text. The former two techniques are tied to creating a mystical state in the listeners while the latter aims at sustaining it. It is customary that a listener enraptured by mystical experience offers a monetary contribution to the performers. Thus, intensification of the text’s impact aims at enabling the listeners to experience mystical states.

Reading the Texture of Reality : Chaos Theory, Literature and the Humanist Perspective

Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan kaaosteorian vaikutusta kaunokirjallisuudessa ja kirjallisuudentutkimuksessa ja esitetään, että kaaosteorian roolia kirjallisuuden kentällä voidaan parhaiten ymmärtää sen avaamien käsitteiden kautta. Suoran soveltamisen sijaan kaaosteorian avulla on käyty uudenlaisia keskusteluja vanhoista aiheista ja luonnontieteestä ammennetut käsitteet ovat johtaneet aiemmin tukkeutuneiden argumenttien avaamiseen uudesta näkökulmasta käsin. Väitöskirjassa keskitytään kolmeen osa-alueeseen: kaunokirjallisen teoksen rakenteen teoretisointiin, ihmisen (erityisesti tekijän) identiteetin hahmottamiseen ja kuvailemiseen sekä fiktion ja todellisuuden suhteen pohdintaan. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on osoittaa, kuinka kaaosteorian kautta näitä aiheita on lähestytty niin kirjallisuustieteessä kuin kaunokirjallisissa teoksissakin. Väitöskirjan keskiössä ovat romaanikirjailija John Barthin, dramatisti Tom Stoppardin ja runoilija Jorie Grahamin teosten analyysit. Nämä kirjailijat ammentavat kaaosteoriasta keinoja käsitteellistää rakenteita, jotka ovat yhtä aikaa dynaamisia prosesseja ja hahmotettavia muotoja. Kaunokirjallisina teemoina nousevat esiin myös ihmisen paradoksaalisesti tunnistettava ja aina muuttuva identiteetti sekä lopullista haltuunottoa pakeneva, mutta silti kiehtova ja tavoiteltava todellisuus. Näiden kirjailijoiden teosten analyysin sekä teoreettisen keskustelun kautta väitöskirjassa tuodaan esiin aiemmassa tutkimuksessa varjoon jäänyt, koherenssia, ymmärrettävyyttä ja realismia painottava humanistinen näkökulma kaaosteorian merkityksestä kirjallisuudessa.

Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia: Joseph Brodsky and Travel Writing

Joseph Brodsky, one of the most influential Russian intellectuals of the late Soviet period, was born in Leningrad in 1940, emigrated to the United States in 1972, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, and died in New York City in 1996. Brodsky was one of the leading public figures of Soviet emigration in the Cold War period, and his role as a model for the constructing of Russian cultural identities in the last years of the Soviet Union was, and still is, extremely important. One of Joseph Brodsky’s great contributions to Russian culture of the latter half of the twentieth century is the wide geographical scope of his poetic and prose works. Brodsky was not a travel writer, but he was a traveling writer who wrote a considerable number of poems and essays which relate to his trips and travels in the Soviet empire and outside it. Travel writing offered for Brodsky a discursive space for negotiating his own transculturation, while it also offered him a discursive space for making powerful statements about displacement, culture, history and geography, time and space—all major themes of his poetry. In this study of Joseph Brodsky’s travel writing I focus on his travel texts in poetry and prose, which relate to his post-1972 trips to Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and Venice. Questions of empire, tourism, and nostalgia are foregrounded in one way or another in Brodsky’s travel writing performed in emigration. I explore these concepts through the study of tropes, strategies of identity construction, and the politics of representation. The theoretical premises of my work draw on the literary and cultural criticism which has evolved around the study of travel and travel writing in recent years. These approaches have gained much from the scholarly experience provided by postcolonial critique. Shifting the focus away from the concept of exile, the traditional framework for scholarly discussions of Brodsky’s works, I propose to review Brodsky’s travel poetry and prose as a response not only to his exilic condition but to the postmodern and postcolonial landscape, which initially shaped the writing of these texts. Discussing Brodsky’s travel writing in this context offers previously unexplored perspectives for analyzing the geopolitical, philosophical, and linguistic premises of his poetic imagination. By situating Brodsky’s travel writing in the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial postmodernity, I attempt to show how Brodsky’s engagement with his contemporary cultural practices in the West was incorporated into his Russian-language travel poetry and prose and how this engagement thus contributed to these texts’ status as exceptional and unique literary events within late Soviet Russian cultural practices.

Andegraund : Istorija i mify leningradskoj neoficial'noj literatury

The history of the Leningrad underground is one of the key themes of late socialism. Samizdat, "black humour", religious syncretism, dissidence, apolitical bohemianism, the pathos of freedom of individuality and the mechanics of literature are closely interlinked with the cultural mythology of this passed epoch. Describing conceptions that, when taken together, form the contemporary understanding of unofficial culture, the author creates a historical portrait of this environment. Amongst the central figures here, there are well-known writers (Bitov, Brodsky, Dovlatov, Khvostenko, Krivulin) and literary activists who still await recognition. The analysis of works, many of which were only distributed in typewritten publications in the 1960s-1980s, gives a preliminary definition of the key factors that united the authors of the unofficial community. The book begins with a critique of the identification of the Soviet underground with political dissidence or with a society living in autonomous independence with regard to the state. Describing the historical development of the various names for this environment (the underground, samizdat, unofficial culture, podpolie and others), the author follows the genesis of the community from its appearance, in the years of "the Thaw", through to perestroika, when it dissolved. Taking the history of the publication of Bitov's "The Pushkin House" as an example, the concept of the unofficial is interpreted as a risky interaction with the authorities. Unofficial culture is then viewed as a late Soviet reflection of the Western underground in the 1950s-1960s. Unlike the radical-utopian-anarchistic source, it proclaimed a liberalist and democratic ideology in the context of the destruction of the socialist utopia. The historical portrait of the community is built up from the perceptions of its members regarding literature practice and rhetorical approaches, with the aid of which these perceptions are expressed. Taking typewritten publications as source material, four main representations are given: privacy, deviancy, criticism and irrationality. An understanding of literature as a private affair, neo-avant-garde deviancy in social and literary behaviour and the pathos of the critical relationship with officialdom and irrational message of literary work, comprise the basis for the worldview of unofficial authors, as well as the poetic system, genre preferences and dictums. An analysis of irrationality, based on the texts of Khvostenko and Bogdanov, leads to a review of the cultural mythologies that were crucial to the unofficial conception of the absurd. Absurd is an homonym. It contains ideas that are important for the worldview of unofficial authors and the poetics of their works. The irrationality of the Soviet order is reflected in the documentary nature of the satirical prose of Dovlatov. The existential absurd of Camus is perceived here as the pointlessness of social realities and the ontological alienation of man, while existentialist practices for consciousness in the "atmosphere of absurd" remain bracketed off. The third homonym of absurd - the conception of reality as an illusion - is a clear demonstration of religious syncretism, where neo-Christian ideas are interweaved with a modernized version of Hinduism, as taken from Rolland s books on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The unofficial community was influenced by the ideology of westernization. Even "the East" arrived here via French retellings and accounts. As a whole, unofficial Leningrad culture can be understood as a neo-modernist phenomenon which, unlike the western neo-modernism of the 1940s and 1950s, arose in the years of the Thaw and ended its existence in the mid-1980s.

Abductive translation studies : The art of marshalling signs

This dissertation contributes to the fields of theoretical translation studies, semiotic translation theory, and the semiotics of translation. The aim of this work is to explore the alternative and potential which the semiotic approaches to translation entail from the viewpoint of contemporary translation studies. The overall objective is thus to show that a general semiotic translation theory, and in particular, a Peircean translation theory, are possible and indispensable. Furthermore, this study contributes to the semiotranslational approach and to its theory-building by developing the concept of abductive translation (studies). The specific theoretical frame of reference adopted in this study is provided by the semiotranslation introduced by Dinda L. Gorlée. This approach is primarily based on the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 1914), and aims at a fusion of semiotics and translation studies. A more general framework is provided by the threefold background and material: the published and unpublished writings of Peirce, Peirce scholarship and Peircean-semiotic publications, as well as the translation-theoretical literature. Part One of this study concentrates on the justification, existence, and nature of the semiotic approaches to translation. This part provides a historical survey, a status report, and a discussion of this area of research, by employing the findings in a boundary-clearing that is multilayered both conceptually and terminologically. Part Two deals with Peircean semiotranslation. Here Gorlée s semiotranslational research is examined by focusing on the starting points, features, and development of semiotranslation. Attention is also paid to the state-of-the-art of semiotranslation theory and to the possibilities for future elaborations. Part Three focuses on the semiotranslational claim that translation is an abductive activity. The concept of abductive translation is based on abduction, one of Peirce s three modes of reasoning; at the same time Firstness, the category of abduction, becomes foregrounded. So abductive translation as a form of possibilistic translation receives here an extensive theoretical discussion by citing examples in which abduction manifests itself as (scientific) reasoning and as everyday contemplation. During this treatise, translation is first equated with sign action, then with interpretation and finally with reasoning. All these approaches appear to embody different facets of the same phenomenon Peirce s ubiquitous semiosis, and they all suggest that translation is inherently an intersemiotic activity in which a sign is inferred from another sign. Translation is therefore semiosis, semiosis is translation and interpretation, interpretation is reasoning, and so on ad infinitum all being manifestations of the art of marshalling signs. The three parts of this study are linked by the overall goal of abductive translation studies: investigation into abductive translation develops the theory of semiotranslation, and this enrichment of semiotranslation in turn constructs a semiotic paradigm within translation studies.

Vyra enie obob čёnno-ličnogo značenija v russkom jazyke

Expressing generalized-personal meaning in Russian Based on data from Russian, this doctoral dissertation examines generalized-personal meaning that is, generic expressions referring to all human beings, people in general, each or any person (e.g. S vozrastom načinae cenit prostye ve či With age you start to appreciate simple things ). The study shares its basic theoretical orientation with functional approaches going from meaning to form . The objective of the thesis is to determine and describe the various linguistic means which can be used by the speaker to express generalized-personal meaning. The main material of the study consists of 2,000 examples collected from modern Russian literature, newspapers, and magazines. The linguistic means of expressing generalized-personal meaning are divided into three main classes. Morphological and lexico-grammatical means (22% of the material) include the use of personal pronouns and personal verbal endings. In Russian, all personal forms except the 3rd person singular can be used in a generalized-personal meaning. Lexical means (14% of the material) involve, above all, pronouns like vse all , ka dyj everyone , nikto no one , as well as the nouns čelovek man and ljudi people . In emotional speech, generalized-personal meaning can also be conveyed lexically by using utterances like da e idiot znaet even an idiot knows . In rhetorical questions the pronoun kto who can appear in this meaning (cf. Kto ne ljubit moro enoe?! Who doesn t like ice cream?! ). The third main class, syntactic means (64% of the material), consists of constructions in which the generic person is not expressed at the surface level. This class mainly includes two-component structures in which the infinitive relates to a modal predicative adverb (e.g. mo no can, be allowed to , nado must ), modal verb (e.g. stoit be worth(while) , sleduet must, be obliged to ), or predicative adverb ending in -о (e.g. trudno it is hard to , neprilično is not appropriate ). Other syntactic means are: one-component infinitive structures, so-called embedded structures, structures with a processual noun, passive constructions, and gerund constructions. The different forms of expression available in Russian are not interchangeable in all contexts. Even if a given context tolerates the substitution of one construction for another, the two expressions are never entirely synonymous. In addition to determining the range of forms which can express generalized-personal meaning, the study aims to compare these forms and to specify the conditions and possible restrictions (contextual, semantic, syntactic, stylistic, etc.) associated with the use of each construction. In Russian linguistics, the generalized-personal meaning has not been extensively studied from a functional perspective. The advantage of a meaning-based functional approach is that it gives a comprehensive picture of the diversity and distribution of the phenomenon.