Taming the TAME systems

This volume on TAME systems (Tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality) stems from the 10th Chronos conference that took place in Aston University (Birmingham, UK) on 18th-20th April 2011. The papers collated here are therefore a chosen selection from a stringent peer-review process. They also witness to the width and breadth of the interests pursued within the Chronos community. Besides the traditional Western European languages, this volume explores languages from Eastern Europe (Greek, Romanian, Russian) and much further afield such as Brazilian Portuguese, Korean or Mandarin Chinese. Little known languages from the Amazonian forest (Amondawa, Baure) or the Andes (Aymara) also come under scrutiny.

Editorial

This time of year we look back at the year that has passed and make plans for the next year. I like to reflect on things that I have learnt and people that I have met, especially those who facilitated that learning. In 2009 I went to various conferences, The BCLA conference in Manchester, The Romanian Optical Society meeting in Brasov, Transylvania (where the university is actually on Vlad Tepes Street), The European Council for Optometry and Optics (ECOO) in Brno, Czech Republic, The American Academy of Optometry (AAO) in Orlando USA, The International Association of Contact Lens Educators (IACLE) meeting in Tianjin China and finally The Vereinigung Deutscher Contactlinsen-Spezialisten (VDCO) meeting in Jena. All were interesting places and thoroughly all were enjoyable conferences with their own highlights but I wanted to focus on Jena and one person I met there and his inspirational search for knowledge and the contributions he made in the field of contact lenses. Jena itself is a fascinating place and should be on the ‘must visit’ list of anyone involved in eye care. It is the birth place of Carl Zeiss of course and where he started his company. It is also the birth place of Ernst Abbe (physicist and optometrist and expert lens maker), and Otto Schott (chemist and technologist who made high quality glass. There are many road signs bearing witness to these famous pioneers. The optical museum is worth spending a few hours looking around too. I was invited to speak at the VDCO at the kind invitation from colleagues at the Jena School of Optometry, Professor Wolfgang Sickenberger and Professor Sebastian Marx. At this meeting I met 87-year-old Willi KAUE who was being awarded the Adolf Wilhelm Müller-Welt prize by the VDCO for contribution to contact lenses over his 60-year career. At the age of 15 Willi Kaue took up an apprenticeship to become an Optician in Germany in 1937. At this time he first heard about the scleral glass lenses made by the Carl Zeiss Company in Jena. This started his lifelong fascination which was to become his passion but not yet his career. During the war he was enlisted into military service but immediately after was back to his former career. In 1950 Willi corrected his own 3.5 dioptres of myopia with a plastic scleral lens. His fascination strengthened as for the first time he himself could experience a wider field of view than his spectacles gave him, less aberrations and less retinal minification. He also appreciated the fact that contact lenses did not cause pressure on the nose or ears and did not slide down his nose plus remained optically centred with his eye movements. He decided that form now on he would make fitting contact lenses his career. He travelled to London to learn more about contact lenses and how to fit them but initially did not find many willing teachers and to start with became largely self-taught. He wanted to know how to make scleral lenses. So far he only knew that pulverized polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) was pressed and moulded. In 1951 he met Berlin optician Otto Marzock. He made his only scleral lenses from using military PMMA windshields. His process involved lathe cutting the lenses and resulted in lenses that were thinner than moulded ones. Willi developed a manufacturing method, using a rotary diamond drill, starting form the outer edge and towards the centre at a constant cut speed. This enabled him to make more reproducible lenses and in less time. His enthusiasm in the field was clear from the travels he made in the pursuit of advancement - travelling around Europe, South America, North America and Asia. In 1963 he visited George Nissel in Hemel Hempstead, England. Constantly thriving towards innovations Willi came across the new Naturalens from the USA made from HEMA at a congress in Marseille in 1969. Amongst his contributions to the field, was his own technique of fitting ocular prosthetics, using an alginate impression of the orbit. I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Willi Kaue and learnt more about his fascinating career through the patient interpreting skills of Hilmar Bussacker (the 2008 winner of the same award and the 2007 winner of the European Federation of the Contact Lens and IOL Industries Award). I look forward to 2010 with eager anticipation as to what I may learn and who I might meet!!! Copyright © 2009 British Contact Lens Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism:an introduction

On the morning of January 5, 1859, at the end of the liturgy in the Orthodox cathedral in Iaşi, the capital of the principality of Moldavia, Father Neofit Scriban addressed the congregation. He had given many sermons in the cathedral; however, on this par tic u lar date Father Neofit faced an unusual audience. Among the faithful who regularly worshipped at the relics of Saint Parascheva, the protector of Moldavia, were the members of the assembly who would decide the future of the principality. They had a specific mission: to elect a new prince, a key figure in their plan to unite Moldavia with the neighboring principality of Wallachia. Father Neofit, a supporter of the unionist cause and fully aware of the significance of the moment, stated: Brethren, Jesus Christ has said that "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst." You, Brethren, are not two, or three, but a real gathering in the name of God. God is in your midst. You are here in the name of the Romanian nation [and] the Romanian nation is in your midst. On the flag under which you have assembled, the flag of the Romanian nation, great events, the Romanian faith, unity, are written in large letters. The church, which is founded on faith, blesses the flag of this faith⋯. You, Brethren, through the faith of the Romanian nation, by remaining faithful to this flag, will find the same strength as the church [finds] in its own saints. The faith of the Romanian nation was not, is not, and will not be anything else, but the unity of all Romanians in a single state, the only anchor of salvation, the only port in which the national boat could be saved from surrounding waves. You, Brethren, have gathered here in the church of Stephen the Great; looking at the altar that he raised to the God of your parents, I think that, through this [altar], you will be able to enter into the wishes of this hero of our nation. You, [remember that] by leaving this place, you are leaving [in order to fulfill] a great gesture that for many centuries has been lost for us; you are about to elect a successor to this great hero; therefore, as his true sons, you could not be anything other than the true expression of his wishes. Myself, [as] last year, from this altar, I said and I will continue to say that this great hero has told us that "the God of our parents will send us a Redeemer who will heal our wounds and accomplish our wishes." May your chosen leader today be the redeemer expected by the Romanian nation. May he heal its wounds and achieve its wishes. Therefore, Brethren, may your election today be that of a real Messiah of Romania. God and the world are looking at you, the church is blessing you and the whole Romanian nation is waiting for you!1 A few hours after Father Neofit's sermon, the assembly elected Alexandru Ioan Cuza to be the prince of the principality of Moldavia; a few days later, on January 24, 1859, the assembly of the neighboring principality of Wallachia decided that Cuza should also be their prince, thus confirming the unification of the two states. A new country was inscribed on the map of Southeastern Europe, titled "The United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia," also known as "The United Romanian Principalities".

Linearly Normal Curves in P^n

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 14H45, 14H50, 14J26.

A Linear Time Algorithm for Computing Longest Paths in Cactus Graphs

ACM Computing Classification System (1998): G.2.2.

Presentation

This volume on TAME systems (Tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality) stems from the 10th Chronos conference that took place in Aston University (Birmingham, UK) on 18th-20th April 2011. The papers collated here are therefore a chosen selection from a stringent peer-review process. They also witness to the width and breadth of the interests pursued within the Chronos community. Besides the traditional Western European languages, this volume explores languages from Eastern Europe (Greek, Romanian, Russian) and much further afield such as Brazilian Portuguese, Korean or Mandarin Chinese. Little known languages from the Amazonian forest (Amondawa, Baure) or the Andes (Aymara) also come under scrutiny.

The rise of Islamism among Turkish immigrants in Germany and the Netherlands

This study is a comparative study of the Turkish Islamist movement Milli Görüş (IGMG) in Germany and the Netherlands. It is a qualitative and a quantitative inquiry about the nature (whether it is moderate or radical) of the Milli Görüş movement in these two countries. The central research questions are: what is the reason for the rise of Islamism among Turks living in two different countries in Europe? What is the reason for the difference in the radicalization levels? Islamism refers to an ideology that turns traditional Islam into a sustained and systematic program that includes social, political, and economic affairs (Pipes 1998). The movements within the framework of Islamism range from moderate to radical. Based on the data collected during the field research conducted in Germany and the Netherlands between the years of 2004-2007, this study suggests that Islamism is a response to social marginalization which is defined as “an external social position, of isolation of the individual or groups, with a limited access to economical, political, educational and communicational resources of the community” (Contained in the law adopted by the Romanian Parliament in 28 February 2002, www.hurriyetim.com, November 25, 2004). It is hypothesized that as the level of social marginalization increases, so does the level of radicalization.

Salt springs from Romania exploited during early archaeological times : a new candidate for World Heritage

Our approach emphasizes on the importance of the first forms of salt springs exploitation meant to obtain recrystallized salt for the development of prehistoric human communities within the continental inlands of Europe. Although it does not compare with the monumental dimension of World Heritage, the exploitation of some salt springs in Eastern Romania goes back around 8 millennia; they may be the oldest such exploitations in the world, as proven by 14C calibrated data. What differentiates Romanian salt springs from other famous similar areas in Europe is the continuity of exploitation and utilization of natural brine. Actually, these resilient behaviours explain the creation of a whole and complex universe of salt, which also represents a unique point of reference within the intangible World Heritage. It is through this association in variable proportions between tangible (non-monumental) and intangible that these salt springs comprising the oldest traces of salt exploitation can be considered elements of World Heritage. Today, important personalities in the fields of archaeology, anthropology and history posit that salt is a major reference for the development of the entire umanity. Obviously, the breakthrough of this idea requires awareness efforts targeting, on one hand, local communities in those areas wand, on the other, national and international scientific and cultural environments concerned with the World Heritage. In this context, a proper motivation is the fact that the last two decades have witnessed an intensification of research on salt, which turned this topic one of the major themes within European archaeology and ethno-archaeology. In terms of local community awareness concerning the importance of salt springs in the economic development of a (micro) area over time, it is worth underlining mostly the specialists’ efforts of presenting this topic in the media. Moreover, the impact of a recent initiative of the two museums in the area (Piatra Neamț and Târgu Neamț)—establishing distinct sections that represent, by using museum-inspired means, both archaeological vestiges and traditional practices of natural brine exploitation and utilization—will prove its extent in time. Certain local authorities and private entrepreneurs have pinpointed that valorising tourist areas comprising the oldest traces of salt exploitation in Romania is an imminent issue. The greatest challenge is finding a balance between the civilization improvements (upgraded access roads, upgrading operating areas, etc.) and thep rotection of still-alive traditional practices of salt exploitation and use, within rural areas. Certain local authorities and private entrepreneurs have pinpointed that valorising tourist areas comprising the oldest traces of salt exploitation in Romania will become, sooner or later, an imminent issue. The greatest challenge is finding a balance between the civilization improvements (upgraded access roads, upgrading operating areas, etc.) and the protection of still-alive traditional practices of salt exploitation and use, within rural areas.

Institutional Persistence in Eastern Europe: Economic and Political Legacies of Empires and Communism

This dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of the roles that institutions play in economic development. How do institutions evolve? What mechanisms are responsible for their persistence? What effects do they have on economic development?

I address these questions using historical and contemporary data from Eastern Europe and Russia. This area is relatively understudied by development economists. It also has a very interesting history. For one thing, for several centuries it was divided between different empires. For another, it experienced wars and socialism in the 20th century. I use some of these exogenous shocks as quasi-natural social experiments to study the institutional transformations and its effects on economic development both in the short and long run.

This first chapter explores whether economic, social, and political institutions vary in their resistance to policies designed to remove them. The empirical context for the analysis is Romania from 1690 to the 2000s. Romania represents an excellent laboratory for studying the persistence of different types of historical institutional legacies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Romania was split between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, where political and economic institutions differed. The Habsburgs imposed less extractive institutions relative to the Ottomans: stronger rule of law, a more stable and predictable state, a more developed civil society, and less corruption. In the 20th century, the Romanian Communist regime tried deliberately to homogenize the country along all relevant dimensions. It was only partially successful. Using a regression discontinuity design, I document the persistence of economic outcomes, social capital, and political attitudes. First, I document remarkable convergence in urbanization, education, unemployment, and income between the two former empires. Second, regarding social capital, no significant differences in organizational membership, trust in bureaucracy, and corruption persist today. Finally, even though the Communists tried to change all political attitudes, significant discontinuities exist in current voting behavior at the former Habsburg-Ottoman border. Using data from the parliamentary elections of 1996-2008, I find that former Habsburg rule decreases by around 6 percentage points the vote share of the major post-Communist left party and increases by around 2 and 5 percentage points the vote shares of the main anti-Communist and liberal parties, respectively.

The second chapter investigates the effects of Stalin’s mass deportations on distrust in central authority. Four deported ethnic groups were not rehabilitated after Stalin’s death; they remained in permanent exile until the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This allows one to distinguish between the effects of the groups that returned to their homelands and those of the groups that were not allowed to return. Using regional data from the 1991 referendum on the future of the Soviet Union, I find that deportations have a negative interim effect on trust in central authority in both the regions of destination and those of origin. The effect is stronger for ethnic groups that remained in permanent exile in the destination regions. Using data from the Life in Transition Survey, the chapter also documents a long-term effect of deportations in the destination regions.

The third chapter studies the short-term effect of Russian colonization of Central Asia on economic development. I use data on the regions of origin of Russian settlers and push factors to construct an instrument for Russian migration to Central Asia. This instrument allows me to interpret the outcomes causally. The main finding is that the massive influx of Russians into the region during the 1897-1926 period had a significant positive effect on indigenous literacy. The effect is stronger for men and in rural areas. Evidently, interactions between natives and Russians through the paid labor market was an important mechanism of human capital transmission in the context of colonization.

The findings of these chapters provide additional evidence that history and institutions do matter for economic development. Moreover, the dissertation also illuminates the relative persistence of institutions. In particular, political and social capital legacies of institutions might outlast economic legacies. I find that most economic differences between the former empires in Romania have disappeared. By the same token, there are significant discontinuities in political outcomes. People in former Habsburg Romania provide greater support for liberalization, privatization, and market economy, whereas voters in Ottoman Romania vote more for redistribution and government control over the economy.

In the former Soviet Union, Stalin’s deportations during World War II have a long-term negative effect on social capital. Today’s residents of the destination regions of deportations show significantly lower levels of trust in central authority. This is despite the fact that the Communist regime tried to eliminate any source of opposition and used propaganda to homogenize people’s political and social attitudes towards the authorities. In Central Asia, the influx of Russian settlers had a positive short-term effect on human capital of indigenous population by the 1920s, which also might have persisted over time.

From a development perspective, these findings stress the importance of institutions for future paths of development. Even if past institutional differences are not apparent for a certain period of time, as was the case with the former Communist countries, they can polarize society later on, hampering economic development in the long run. Different institutions in the past, which do not exist anymore, can thus contribute to current political instability and animosity.

DIGITAL HISTORY: DESIGNING VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS THAT SUPPORT CRITICAL THINKING AND IDEA EXCHANGE, MOTIVATE AND ENGAGE USERS

In my thesis I argue for the use of system designs that: a) open access to a variety of users and allow for collaboration and idea exchange, while at the same time, b) are designed to motivate and engage users. To exemplify my proposed systems design, I created an interactive and open digital history project focused on Romanian culture and identity during Communism, from 1947, when the Communist Party took power by forcing the King to abdicate, until the revolution in 1989, which marked the end of Communism in Romania (Gilberg, 1990, Boia, 2014). In my project, I present the possibility to recreate Habermas’ notion of public sphere and “the unforced force of the better argument” (Habermas, 1989) and Dewey’s (2004) understanding of democracy as a mode of associated living imbued of the spirit of inquiry within contemporary digital history projects. Second, I outline system designs that motivate and engage users, by satisfying the basic psychological needs outlined in Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Two more concepts are included to complete the proposed digital history project design: presence (Ryan, Rigby, & Przybylski, 2006) and learner hero (Rigby & Przybylski, 2009).

Return Migration in the Ecuadorian and Bolivian population: motivations, strategies and discourses

This article analyses the motivations for return migration among the Ecuadorians and Bolivians who, after living in Spain, returned to their countries of origin during the economic crisis that started in 2008. From the analysis of 22 interviews in-depth which took place in Ecuador and 38 in Bolivia to women, men and young people from migrant families, this decision-making process is shown to be embedded into a gendered dynamics of relationships. Particular detail is given to affective and economic elements that had an influence on the decision to return, as well as to the strategies deployed to project their readjustment back in origin. Males and females occupy differential positions within the family, work and social circle, their expectations being built in a gendered manner. Despite the fact migration has brought women greater economic power within the family group, their reintegration upon return redefines their role as main managers in the household and the dynamics that allow their social reproduction. Men, for their part, aspire to refresh their role as providers in spite of their frail labour position upon return. Social mobility for females is passed on through generations by a strong investment on education for their daughters and sons, while for males this mobility revolves around setting up family businesses and around their demonstrative abilities.

ReaderBench goes Online: A Comprehension-Centered Framework for Educational Purposes

In this paper we introduce the online version of our ReaderBench framework, which includes multi-lingual comprehension-centered web services designed to address a wide range of individual and collaborative learning scenarios, as follows. First, students can be engaged in reading a course material, then eliciting their understanding of it; the reading strategies component provides an in-depth perspective of comprehension processes. Second, students can write an essay or a summary; the automated essay grading component provides them access to more than 200 textual complexity indices covering lexical, syntax, semantics and discourse structure measurements. Third, students can start discussing in a chat or a forum; the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) component provides indepth conversation analysis in terms of evaluating each member’s involvement in the CSCL environments. Eventually, the sentiment analysis, as well as the semantic models and topic mining components enable a clearer perspective in terms of learner’s points of view and of underlying interests.

Ernest Mercier, le pétrole et la France

Ernest Mercier est l’un des patrons les plus influents de l'entre-deux-guerres en France. Ses différentes activités industrielles l'ont conduit à siéger sur de vastes pans de l’économie française, notamment du secteur énergétique. La thèse retrace la carrière pétrolière d'un homme qui a joué un rôle central pour le développement d'une industrie devenue stratégique, mais qui est embryonnaire lorsqu'il rejoint ce secteur après la Première Guerre mondiale. Mercier assiste et assure la création d'une industrie pétrolière nationale. Les obstacles se font légion contre les ambitions pétrolières de la France. Elle se présente bien tard sur un marché étroitement contrôlé par de puissants trusts. La recherche et l'exploitation pétrolière demandent d'importantes ressources, et aucune société française n'a les moyens d'une politique indépendante. Certaines banques se lancent alors dans les affaires de pétrole en s'alliant aux grands trusts internationaux. C'est le cas de Paribas; la gestion de ses avoirs roumains représente la première expérience de Mercier dans ce secteur. L'État s'intéresse aussi au pétrole, il devient un acteur incontournable. Le gouvernement français n'a pourtant pas les moyens de ses ambitions dans le domaine pétrolier. La politique nationale mise en place durant l'entre-deux-guerres doit faire appel à l'épargne privée française. La création d'une compagnie nationale, la Compagnie française des pétroles, en 1924 regroupe ainsi les différentes banques et sociétés intéressées au pétrole. Mercier est personnellement choisi par le président Raymond Poincaré pour mener à bien cette mission. Cette carrière s'articule donc autour d'un fragile équilibre entre milieux privés et gouvernement. Mercier devient rapidement l'intermédiaire incontournable qui régit ces relations. La thèse s'appuie sur les archives bancaires et industrielles, mais aussi sur celles du gouvernement français et de ses différents ministères. Cette analyse de la carrière d'Ernest Mercier permet de retracer les origines du secteur pétrolier français et l'action déterminante d'un homme. Elle expose les mécanismes d'influence d'une puissante banque d'affaires et les conflits d'intérêts qu'engendre l'exploitation pétrolière.

Nonlinear periodic problems with a jumping reaction

We consider a periodic problem driven by the scalar $p-$Laplacian and with a jumping (asymmetric) reaction. We prove two multiplicity theorems. The first concerns the nonlinear problem ($1