Ditos populares em músicas do cancioneiro popular: uma abordagem cognitiva

Nesta dissertação, analisam-se alguns ditos populares retomados em músicas do cancioneiro popular, com base na teoria da metáfora conceptual (Lakoff e Jonhson, 1980; Kövecses, 2002), e na teoria da integração conceptual (Fauconnier e Turner, 2002). Busca se investigar se a projeção metafórica presente no dito empregado em situações cotidianas se sustenta, quando o mesmo é retomado em uma letra de música. Este estudo encontra sua justificativa em uma das assunções basilares da linguística cognitiva de que as metáforas conceptuais estão presentes tanto nas conversas cotidianas quanto nas manifestações literárias e artísticas. Pretende se, assim, observar a multidirecionalidade dos processos de significação desse tipo de construção linguística, a fim de postular seu poder projetivo e metafórico na mente dos falantes. Dentro do repertório de construções proverbiais em português, é perceptível a construção proverbial condicional com a configuração sintático semântica [x P Q], entre as quais foi escolhida como objeto de estudo a configuração [Quem P Q]. A escolha das músicas foi aleatória, já que não se buscou um gênero ou estilo específico, mas canções que possuíssem ditos populares em suas letras. Na análise, de cunho interpretativo, procedeu-se a identificação do papel da metáfora conceptual presente no dito empregado em situações cotidianas e nas 10 músicas selecionadas para este estudo. Em seguida, postularam-se redes de integração conceptual subjacente ao sentido dos ditos nas interações em geral e nas músicas, de modo a explicar que as diferenças de sentido observadas ou não nos ditos transpostos para letras de músicas estão relacionadas ao tipo de rede de integração conceptual ativado durante o processo de mesclagem. As redes de integração postuladas para explicar a construção de sentido dos ditos e destes nas músicas analisadas, revelam compressões das relações de CAUSA EFEITO, MUDANÇA, IDENTIDADE, ANALOGIA DESANALOGIA e TEMPO, devido, sobretudo, ao papel que os ditos desempenham ao ilustrar cenas da vida das pessoas. Entre as metáforas que estruturam os ditos, nas interações e nas músicas, encontram-se A VIDA É UMA VIAGEM / A VIDA É UM TRAJETO QUE DEVE SER PERCORRIDO COM CAUTELA / VIDA É UM JOGO DE AZAR; TEMPO É LOCAL PARA ONDE ALGO SE DESLOCA; DIFICULDADES SÃO IMPEDIMENTOS (IN) TRANSPONÍVEIS; RELIGIÃO É UMA TRANSAÇÃO COMERCIAL; MORAL É UM OBJETO PRECIOSO (MAS FRÁGIL COMO O VIDRO); EXAGEROS SÃO GOLPES INCERTOS. Espera-se que a hipótese aventada com este estudo motive outras pesquisas sob o escopo teórico da Linguística Cognitiva; em especial, as teorias da metáfora e da mesclagem conceptual, as quais revelaram um potencial descritivo promissor para análise de fenômenos semântico-pragmáticos da língua portuguesa, como os ditos populares, construções situadas no topo da escala de idiomaticidade

Cross-Ocean distribution of Rhodobacterales bacteria as primary surface colonizers in temperate coastal marine waters

Bacterial surface colonization is a universal adaptation strategy in aquatic environments. However, neither the identities of early colonizers nor the temporal changes in surface assemblages are well understood. To determine the identities of the most common bacterial primary colonizers and to assess the succession process, if any, of the bacterial assemblages during early stages of surface colonization in coastal water of the West Pacific Ocean, nonnutritive inert materials (glass, Plexiglas, and polyvinyl chloride) were employed as test surfaces and incubated in seawater off the Qingdao coast in the spring of 2005 for 24 and 72 h. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences amplified from the recovered surface-colonizing microbiota indicated that diverse bacteria colonized the submerged surfaces. Multivariate statistical cluster analyses indicated that the succession of early surface-colonizing bacterial assemblages followed sequential steps on all types of test surfaces. The Rhodobacterales, especially the marine Roseobacter clade members, formed the most common and dominant primary surface-colonizing bacterial group. Our current data, along with previous studies of the Atlantic coast, indicate that the Rhodobacterales bacteria are the dominant and ubiquitous primary surface colonizers in temperate coastal waters of the world and that microbial surface colonization follows a succession sequence. A conceptual model is proposed based on these findings, which may have important implications for understanding the structure, dynamics, and function of marine biofilms and for developing strategies to harness or control surface-associated microbial communities.

投射性空间关系表达过程的研究

It is easy to find that, in each language, the terms and phrases for the representation of spatial locating and orientation, and the ways for sharing spatial knowledge are very rich. The basic way of sharing spatial information is mapping our experience and actions with the environment by using terms and utterances that represent spatial relations. How to build the mapping relation among them and what factors affect the process of mapping are the questions need to be answered in this study. The whole course of expressing projective spatial relation includes the verbal expression and perception to the projective spatial relation. In experiment 1, the perceptual characteristics of perceiving the projective spatial relation was studied by analyzing the production latencies from the presentation of the stimulators in different directions (at 5 levels: 00, 22.50, 450, 67.50, and 900) to the onset of the corresponding buttons triggering on the keyboard, the study verifies the results of prior researches and revealed the foundation of expressing the projective spatial relation. In the experiment 2, and 3, the way and the role of the verbal expression were investigated. Subjects were asked to speak out the spatial relation between intended object and reference object by using verbal locative expressions. In experiment 2, Chinese was used as the verbal expression way, and in Experiment 3, English instead. Experiment 4 was similar as experiment 3, but time of voice key triggering was controlled and balanced among trials to verify the results of Experiment 3 further. Experiment 5 investigated the effect of pre-cue on the courses of expressing projective spatial relation. There were two kinds of clues, one was the spatial locative utterances, and the other was the perceptual coordinates framework, such as drawing a cross ”+” in a circle to imply four quadrants. The main conclusions of this research were as follows: 1. When speaking out a spatial relation, different sets of spatial terms, such as “left and right”, or “north and south”, affected the speed of verbal expression. Verbal coding process was affected by how well the perceptual salient direction matched with spatial terms, which made the speed of verbal expression different. 2. When using composite spatial terms to express diagonal directions, people tend to use direct mapping from spatial conceptual representation to composite spatial terms, rather than combining the two axes, which implied there existed direct one-on-one mapping between spatial conceptual representation and spatial terms. But during specific developing period, the way of combining two axes was employed as well for spatial expression, which meant perceptual salient directions played critical role in the process of perceiving and expressing projective spatial relations. 3. The process of verbal expression of the projective spatial relation was improved by the familiarity of spatial utterances, but this improvement was not the results of enhancement of the effect of prototypical diagonal direction.

Towards enhanced divine-human-earth relations: a Christian-Buddhist contribution

The central claim of the dissertation is that lesser known and somewhat neglected, yet influential thinkers, within classical religious traditions have something worthwhile to contribute to the kind of ethos we should adopt in the face of the world’s various environmental crises. Moreover an exploration of such perspectives is best done in dialogue, particularly between Eastern and Western thought. I examine this claim primarily through a dialogue between the Christian philosopher John Scottus Eriugena and the Japanese Buddhist philosopher Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi). This dialogue, framed by the triad of divine-human-earth relations, primarily emphasises the oneness of all reality, and it finds expression in Eriugena’s concept of natura or phusis and Kūkai’s central teaching that the phenomenal world is the cosmic Buddha Dainichi. By highlighting this focus, I contribute to the existing academic field of ecology and religion on the subject of holism. However, I go beyond the materialist focus that generally marks such ecological holism within that field, offering instead a more metaphysical approach. This is indicated through my use of the concept of ‘immanental transcendence’ to describe Eriugena’s and Kūkai’s dynamic, numinous and mysterious notion of reality, as well as my exploration of Eriugena’s concept of theophany and Kūkai’s notion of kaji. I further explore how both philosophers highlight the human role in the process of reaching enlightenment—understood as attaining union with the whole. In that regard, I note significant differences in their positions: in particular, I note that Kūkai’s emphasis on bodily practices contrasts with Eriugena’s more conceptual approach. Finally to bolster my claim, I examine some ecologically oriented understandings of contemporary phenomenological approaches found particularly in the work of Jean-Luc Marion and to a lesser extent Merleau-Ponty, arguing that these reflect notions of reality and of the human role similar to those of the medieval philosophers.

Nuclear ingredients for cross section calculation of exotic nuclei

The increasing need for cross sections far from the valley of stability, especially for applications such as nuclear astrophysics, poses a challenge for nuclear reaction models. So far, predictions of cross sections have relied on more or less phenomenological approaches, depending on parameters adjusted to available experimental data or deduced from systematic relations. While such predictions are expected to be reliable for nuclei not too far from the experimentally known regions, it is clearly preferable to use more fundamental approaches, based on sound physical bases, when dealing with very exotic nuclei. Thanks to the high computer power available today, all major ingredients required to model a nuclear reaction can now be (and have been) microscopically (or semi-microscopically) determined starting from the information provided by an effective nucleon-nucleon interaction. All these microscopic ingredients have been included in the latest version of the TALYS nuclear reaction code (http://www.talys.eu/).

Cross-hemispheric collaboration and segregation associated with task difficulty as revealed by structural and functional connectivity.

Although it is known that brain regions in one hemisphere may interact very closely with their corresponding contralateral regions (collaboration) or operate relatively independent of them (segregation), the specific brain regions (where) and conditions (how) associated with collaboration or segregation are largely unknown. We investigated these issues using a split field-matching task in which participants matched the meaning of words or the visual features of faces presented to the same (unilateral) or to different (bilateral) visual fields. Matching difficulty was manipulated by varying the semantic similarity of words or the visual similarity of faces. We assessed the white matter using the fractional anisotropy (FA) measure provided by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and cross-hemispheric communication in terms of fMRI-based connectivity between homotopic pairs of cortical regions. For both perceptual and semantic matching, bilateral trials became faster than unilateral trials as difficulty increased (bilateral processing advantage, BPA). The study yielded three novel findings. First, whereas FA in anterior corpus callosum (genu) correlated with word-matching BPA, FA in posterior corpus callosum (splenium-occipital) correlated with face-matching BPA. Second, as matching difficulty intensified, cross-hemispheric functional connectivity (CFC) increased in domain-general frontopolar cortex (for both word and face matching) but decreased in domain-specific ventral temporal lobe regions (temporal pole for word matching and fusiform gyrus for face matching). Last, a mediation analysis linking DTI and fMRI data showed that CFC mediated the effect of callosal FA on BPA. These findings clarify the mechanisms by which the hemispheres interact to perform complex cognitive tasks.

Mapping the semantic structure of cognitive neuroscience.

Cognitive neuroscience, as a discipline, links the biological systems studied by neuroscience to the processing constructs studied by psychology. By mapping these relations throughout the literature of cognitive neuroscience, we visualize the semantic structure of the discipline and point to directions for future research that will advance its integrative goal. For this purpose, network text analyses were applied to an exhaustive corpus of abstracts collected from five major journals over a 30-month period, including every study that used fMRI to investigate psychological processes. From this, we generate network maps that illustrate the relationships among psychological and anatomical terms, along with centrality statistics that guide inferences about network structure. Three terms--prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and anterior cingulate cortex--dominate the network structure with their high frequency in the literature and the density of their connections with other neuroanatomical terms. From network statistics, we identify terms that are understudied compared with their importance in the network (e.g., insula and thalamus), are underspecified in the language of the discipline (e.g., terms associated with executive function), or are imperfectly integrated with other concepts (e.g., subdisciplines like decision neuroscience that are disconnected from the main network). Taking these results as the basis for prescriptive recommendations, we conclude that semantic analyses provide useful guidance for cognitive neuroscience as a discipline, both by illustrating systematic biases in the conduct and presentation of research and by identifying directions that may be most productive for future research.

Computer aided parallelisation tools (CAPTools) — conceptual overview and performance on the parallelisation of structured mesh codes

Computer Aided Parallelisation Tools (CAPTools) is a toolkit designed to automate as much as possible of the process of parallelising scalar FORTRAN 77 codes. The toolkit combines a very powerful dependence analysis together with user supplied knowledge to build an extremely comprehensive and accurate dependence graph. The initial version has been targeted at structured mesh computational mechanics codes (eg. heat transfer, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)) and the associated simple mesh decomposition paradigm is utilised in the automatic code partition, execution control mask generation and communication call insertion. In this, the first of a series of papers [1–3] the authors discuss the parallelisations of a number of case study codes showing how the various component tools may be used to develop a highly efficient parallel implementation in a few hours or days. The details of the parallelisation of the TEAMKE1 CFD code are described together with the results of three other numerical codes. The resulting parallel implementations are then tested on workstation clusters using PVM and an i860-based parallel system showing efficiencies well over 80%.

Cross-Border Environmental Governance and EC Law

This article examines the nature and scope of emerging cross-border participatory rights under European Community environmental law. It reviews the legal and political forces that have stimulated the development of such rights and also the specific nature of the rights conferred by three major legislative initiatives: the Community Directives on Environmental Impact Assessment, Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, and the Water Framework Directive. The article concludes with a case study on Ireland which assesses the likely significance of these cross-border participatory rights for transboundary environmental governance in Ireland.

Welfare Effort and Poverty from the Monetary and Capabilities Approach: A Cross-Country Analysis in Latin American and the Caribbean (1990-2010)

There is abundant empirical evidence on the negative relationship between welfare effort and poverty. However, poverty indicators traditionally used have been representative of the monetary approach, excluding its multidimensional reality from the analysis. Using three regression techniques for the period 1990-2010 and controlling for demographic and cyclical factors, this paper examines the relationship between social spending per capita —as the indicator of welfare effort— and poverty in up to 21 countries of the region. The proportion of the population with an income below its national basic basket of goods and services (PM1) and the proportion of population with an income below 50% of the median income per capita (PM2) were the two poverty indicators considered from the monetarist approach to measure poverty. From the capability approach the proportion of the population with food inadequacy (PC1) and the proportion of the population without access to improved water sources or sanitation facilities (PC2) were used. The fi ndings confi rm that social spending is actually useful to explain changes in poverty (PM1, PC1 and PC2), as there is a high negative and signifi cant correlation between the variables before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. In two regression techniques, social spending per capita did not show a negative relationship with the PM2. Countries with greater welfare effort for the period 1990-2010 were not necessarily those with the lowest level of poverty. Ultimately social spending per capita was more useful to explain changes in poverty from the capability approach.

North/South Infrastructure Development via Cross-border PPP Mechanism

Both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland governments recognise the current infrastructural deficits in their respective jurisdictions which, if not addressed, will undermine the future economic prosperity of both regions. This paper considers the adoption of a collaborative approach on the island to addressing the deficit, using public private partnerships (PPP) as the delivery vehicle. It presents a critical perspective of the challenges and opportunities posed by adopting such a cross-border approach. Whilst PPPs have the potential to bring about North-South co-operation, bridge gaps in infrastructure capacity and facilitate the advancement of sectoral knowledge, their adoption on a cross border basis will require significant reorganisation and change at administrative and sectoral levels. This review concludes that governments and construction sector representatives in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have still some work to do in order to enhance the capability and readiness of public and private partners to evolve an all-island PPP infrastructure development approach.