A Word. Palaver and Its Transferal Residues

The word 'palaver' is colloquially associated with useless verbiage and the nuisance of a tediously long, aimless and superfluous debate. At the same time, it insinuates an uncivilized culture of discourse beyond reason. Thus it appears to be of vaguely exotic origin but still firmly set in the European lexicon. Yet behind this contemporary meaning there lies a long history of linguistic and cultural transfers which is encased in a context of different usages of language and their intersections. By tracing the usage and semantics of 'palaver' in various encyclopaedias, glossaries and dictionaries of English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, the following article explores the rich history of this word. Moreover, it also regards the travelling semantics of the term 'palaver' as a process of cultural transfer that can be likened to the microcellular workings of a (retro)virus. Viral reproduction and evolution work through processes of transfer that enable the alteration of the host to adjust it to the replication and reproduction of the virus. In some cases, these processes also allow for the mutation or modification of the virus, making it suitable for transfer from one host to another. The virus is thus offered here as a vital model for cultural transfer: It not only encompasses the necessary adoption and adaption of contents or objects of cultural transfer in different contexts. It contributes to a conceptual understanding of the transferal residue that the transferred content is endowed with by its diversifying contexts. This model thereby surpasses an understanding of cultural transfer as literal translation or transmission: it conceptualizes cultural transfer as an agent of evolutionary processes, allowing for mutational effects of transfer as endowment.

The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England

Edited by Annette Kern-Stähler, Beatrix Busse, and Wietse de Boer The essays collected in The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England examine the interrelationships between sense perception and secular and Christian cultures in England from the medieval into the early modern periods. They address canonical texts and writers in the fields of poetry, drama, homiletics, martyrology and early scientific writing, and they espouse methods associated with the fields of corpus linguistics, disability studies, translation studies, art history and archaeology, as well as approaches derived from traditional literary studies. Together, these papers constitute a major contribution to the growing field of sensorial research that will be of interest to historians of perception and cognition as well as to historians with more generalist interests in medieval and early modern England.

A standard operation procedure and a pilot water testing for herbicides in northwest Harris County, Texas

Herbicides are used to control the growth of weeds along highways, power lines, and many other urban locations. Exposure to herbicides has been linked to adverse health outcomes. This study was initiated to pretest for the presence of herbicides in multiple water sources near intersections in a corridor in the Northwest Harris County (specifically in the Highway 6/FM 1960, North Freeway 45, US 290 and S 99 corridor). Roadside water and tap water samples were collected and analyzed for herbicides using the established Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Method 515.4: "Determination of Chlorinated Acids in Drinking Water by Liquid-Liquid Micro-extraction, Derivatization, and Fast Gas Chromatography with Electron Capture Detection." A standard operating procedure (adapted from the US EPA Method 515.4) was developed for subsequent, larger studies of environmental fate of herbicides and non-occupational exposure risks. Preliminary testing of 16 water samples was performed to pretest the existence of trace herbicides; all concentrations that were greater than the minimum reporting limits of each analyte are reported with a 99 percent confidence. This study failed to find concentrations above the limits of detection of the method in any of the samples collected on June 15, 2008. However, this does not indicate that the waters around the NW Harris County are free of herbicides and metabolites. A larger and repeated sampling in the region would be necessary to make that claim. ^

Historias, recepciones y tradiciones : notas sobre filosofía chilena : la tradición analítica

El libro de Alex Ibarra, Filosofía chilena. La tradición analítica en el período de la institucionalización de la filosofía, plantea la discusión sobre las líneas filosóficas, demostrando la existencia de cierta tradición analítica en Chile. A partir de allí, reflexionamos en torno a los procesos de constitución del campo de la filosofía en Chile como una historia atravesada por la necesidad de préstamos y cruces que impiden una delimitación clara de sus límites, lo que tornaría necesaria la atención a ciertas políticas de la lectura que el libro soslaya. La productividad de la filosofía producida en Chile surgiría gracias –y no pese– a su inscripción en sus tiempos y espacios, a partir de recepciones cuya ausencia de retraso no impide el gesto de cierto re–trazo de lo leído.

Composition of sulfides from the Sierra Leone Fracture Zone (Central Atlantic Ocean)

An analysis of data on the location of hydrothermal fields, seismicity, and satellite altimetry evidences that in mid-ocean ridges with low spreading rate hydrothermal fields tend to be grouped in areas with generally low seismic activity and at intersections of discontinuities and rift zones. Based on this assumption, the Sierra Leone Fracture Zone was studied in 2000 during Cruise 22 of R/V Akademik Nikolaj Strakhov. A study of gabbrodolerite and dolerite showed that sulfide ore minerals in them were formed both by hydrothermal and magmatic processes. An analysis of melt inclusions demonstrated that magmatic complexes formed from a high-temperature (1210-1255°C) low-potassium melt of the N-MORB type. Investigations of fluid inclusions revealed that gabbro and dolerite formed under influence of an active hydrothermal system at temperature 205-226°C. Thus, the Sierra Leone Fracture Zone is considered to be perspective for a discovery of a new hydrothermal field.

Luis María Ravagnan : Psicología y filosofía : Del Bergsonismo a la fenomenología existencial

Este trabajo resume la historia intelectual de Luis María Ravagnan, uno de los autores más productivos de la psicología argentina de mediados del siglo XX. Su concepción de la psicología, íntimamente vinculada con la filosofía, lo diferenciaba claramente de otros autores de su época, más interesados en el psicoanálisis o en los aspectos aplicados de la disciplina. Sin embargo, el rol que desempeñó en la recepción del pensamiento francés en general y de la fenomenología existencial en particular lo situó en una zona de intersecciones que fue fundamental para la construcción de los discursos de la psicología en los años 60

Luis María Ravagnan : Psicología y filosofía : Del Bergsonismo a la fenomenología existencial

Este trabajo resume la historia intelectual de Luis María Ravagnan, uno de los autores más productivos de la psicología argentina de mediados del siglo XX. Su concepción de la psicología, íntimamente vinculada con la filosofía, lo diferenciaba claramente de otros autores de su época, más interesados en el psicoanálisis o en los aspectos aplicados de la disciplina. Sin embargo, el rol que desempeñó en la recepción del pensamiento francés en general y de la fenomenología existencial en particular lo situó en una zona de intersecciones que fue fundamental para la construcción de los discursos de la psicología en los años 60