On a first-name basis: Englishization and naming in Flanders

Following and contributing to the ongoing shift from more structuralist, system-oriented to more pragmatic, socio-cultural oriented anglicism research, this paper verifies to what extent the global spread of English affects naming patterns in Flanders. To this end, a diachronic database of first names is constructed, containing the top 75 most popular boy and girl names from 2005 until 2014. In a first step, the etymological background of these names is documented and the evolution in popularity of the English names in the database is tracked. Results reveal no notable surge in the preference for English names. This paper complements these database-driven results with an experimental study, aiming to show how associations through referents are in this case more telling than associations through phonological form (here based on etymology). Focusing on the socio-cultural background of first names in general and of Anglo-American pop culture in particular, the second part of the study specifically reports on results from a survey where participants are asked to name the first three celebrities that leap to mind when hearing a certain first name (e.g. Lana, triggering the response Del Rey). Very clear associations are found between certain first names and specific celebrities from Anglo-American pop culture. Linking back to marketing research and the social turn in onomastics, we will discuss how these celebrities might function as referees, and how social stereotypes surrounding these referees are metonymically attached to their first names. Similar to the country-of-origin-effect in marketing, these metonymical links could very well be the reason why parents select specific “celebrity names”. Although further attitudinal research is needed, this paper supports the importance of including socio-cultural parameters when conducting onomastic research.

An appraisal of adaptive management planning and implementation in ecological restoration: case studies from the San Francisco Bay Delta, USA

Adaptive management has been defined and redefined in the context of natural resource management, yet there are few examples of its successful application in ecological restoration. Although the 2009 Delta Reform Act now legally requires adaptive management for all restoration efforts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, in California, USA, projects in this region still encounter problems with implementation. We used a comparative case study analysis to examine adaptive management planning and implementation both in and around the Delta, assessing not only why adaptive management is not yet well implemented, but also what changes can be made to facilitate the adaptive management approach without sacrificing scientific rigor. Adaptive management seems to be directly and indirectly affected by a variety of challenges and convoluted by ambiguity in both planning documents and practitioner’s interpretations of the concept. Addressing these challenges and ambiguities at the project level may facilitate the adaptive management process and help make it more accessible to practitioners.

Dealing with flood damages: will prevention, mitigation, and ex post compensation provide for a resilient triangle?

There is a wealth of literature on the design of ex post compensation mechanisms for natural disasters. However, more research needs to be done on the manner in which these mechanisms could steer citizens toward adopting individual-level preventive and protection measures in the face of flood risks. We have provided a comparative legal analysis of the financial compensation mechanisms following floods, be it through insurance, public funds, or a combination of both, with an empirical focus on Belgium, the Netherlands, England, and France. Similarities and differences between the methods in which these compensation mechanisms for flood damages enhance resilience were analyzed. The comparative analysis especially focused on the link between the recovery strategy on the one hand and prevention and mitigation strategies on the other. There is great potential within the recovery strategy for promoting preventive action, for example in terms of discouraging citizens from living in high-risk areas, or encouraging the uptake of mitigation measures, such as adaptive building. However, this large potential has yet to be realized, in part because of insufficient consideration and promotion of these connections within existing legal frameworks. We have made recommendations about how the linkages between strategies can be further improved. These recommendations relate to, among others, the promotion of resilient reinstatement through recovery mechanisms and the removal of legal barriers preventing the establishment of link-inducing measures.

Riemann-Hilbert problems for poly-Hardy space on the unit ball

In this paper, we focus on a Riemann–Hilbert boundary value problem (BVP) with a constant coefficients for the poly-Hardy space on the real unit ball in higher dimensions. We first discuss the boundary behaviour of functions in the poly-Hardy class. Then we construct the Schwarz kernel and the higher order Schwarz operator to study Riemann–Hilbert BVPs over the unit ball for the poly- Hardy class. Finally, we obtain explicit integral expressions for their solutions. As a special case, monogenic signals as elements in the Hardy space over the unit sphere will be reconstructed in the case of boundary data given in terms of functions having values in a Clifford subalgebra. Such monogenic signals represent the generalization of analytic signals as elements of the Hardy space over the unit circle of the complex plane.

There exists circularity between WACC and value? Another solution.

Although we know there exists a simple approach to solve the circularity between value and the discount rate, known as the Adjusted Present Value proposed by Myers, 1974, it seems that practitioners still rely on the traditional Weighted Average Cost of Capital, WACC approach of weighting the cost of debt, Kd and the cost of equity, Ke and discounting the Free Cash Flow, FCF. We show how to solve circularity when calculating value with the free cash flow, FCF and the WACC. As a result of the solution we arrive at a known solution when we assume the discount rate of the tax equity: the capital cash flow, CCF discounted at Ku. When assuming Kd as the discount rate for the tax savings, we find an expression for calculating value that does not implies circularity. We do this for a single period and for N periods.

Design of advanced reverse osmosis and nanofiltration membranes for water purification

Most commercially available reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes are based on the thin film composite (TFC) aromatic polyamide membranes. However, they have several disadvantages including low resistance to fouling, low chemical and thermal stabilities and limited chlorine tolerance. To address these problems, advanced RO/NF membranes are being developed from polyimides for water and wastewater treatments. The following three projects have resulted from my research. (1) Positively charged and solvent resistant NF membranes. The use of solvent resistant membranes to facilitate small molecule separations has been a long standing industry goal of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. We developed a solvent resistant membrane by chemically cross-linking of polyimide membrane using polyethylenimine. This membrane showed excellent stability in almost all organic solvents. In addition, this membrane was positively charged due to the amine groups remaining on the surface. As a result, high efficiency (> 95%) and selectivity for multivalent heavy metal removal was achieved. (2) Fouling resistant NF membranes. Antifouling membranes are highly desired for “all” applications because fouling will lead to higher energy demand, increase of cleaning and corresponding down time and reduced life-time of the membrane elements. For fouling prevention, we designed a new membrane system using a coating technique to modify membrane surface properties to avoid adsorption of foulants like humic acid. A layer of water-soluble polymer such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyacrylic acid (PAA), polyvinyl sulfate (PVS) or sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK), was adsorbed onto the surface of a positively charged membrane. The resultant membranes have a smooth and almost neutrally charged surface which showed better fouling resistance than both the positively charged NF membranes and commercially available negatively charged NTR-7450 membrane. In addition, these membranes showed high efficiency for removal of multivalent ions (> 95% for both cations and anions). Therefore, these antifouling surfaces can be potentially used for water softening, water desalination and wastewater treatment in a membrane bioreactor (MBR) process. (3) Thermally stable RO membranes. Commercial RO membranes cannot be used at temperature higher than 45°C due to the use of polysulfone substrate, which often limits their applications in industries. We successfully developed polyimides as the membrane substrate for thermally stable RO membranes due to their high thermal resistance. The polyimide-based composite polyamide membranes showed desalination performance comparable to the commercial TFC membrane. However, the key advantage of the polyimide-based membrane is its high thermal stability. As the feed temperature increased from 25oC to 95oC, the water flux increased 5 - 6 times while the salt rejection almost kept constant. This membrane appears to provide a unique solution for hot water desalination and also a feasible way to improve the water productivity by increasing the operating temperature without any drop in salt rejection.

En Estados Unidos, blanco más negro, gris o conflicto : ébano y marfil

Fondo Margaritainés Restrepo

Filmowe interpretacje polskiej transformacji gospodarczej. Kulturowe spory o obraz Polski

Wydział Nauk Społecznych: Instytut Kulturoznawstwa

Kulturowa interpretacja filozofii moralności Davida Hume’a

Wydział Nauk Społecznych: Instytut Filozofii

Wind Waves in the Arctic Seas: Envisat and AltiKa Data Analysis

Wind-generated waves in the Kara, Laptev, and East-Siberian Seas are investigated using altimeter data from Envisat RA-2 and SARAL-AltiKa. Only isolated ice-free zones had been selected for analysis. Wind seas can be treated as pure wind-generated waves without any contamination by ambient swell. Such zones were identified using ice concentration data from microwave radiometers. Altimeter data, both significant wave height (SWH) and wind speed, for these areas were further obtained for the period 2002-2012 using Envisat RA-2 measurements, and for 2013 using SARAL-AltiKa. Dependencies of dimensionless SWH and wavelength on dimensionless wave generation spatial scale are compared to known empirical dependencies for fetch-limited wind wave development. We further check sensitivity of Ka- and Ku-band and discuss new possibilities that AltiKa's higher resolution can open.

Czy jesteśmy odpowiedzialni za nasze działania?

The article discusses a responsibility game which is, in fact a ‘question-answer-game’. Firstly, the characteristic of the responsibility game is made. Secondly, the ontology of the responsibility game is settled. Thirdly, the causality of our intentions and the process of decision making are analysed in-depth. Fourthly, the importance of a decision criterion for the process of decisionmaking is proven; whereby, a definition of an action an agent is morally responsible for is finally formulated.

Kim jestem? Kim się staję? Od praktyki do teorii

W artykule w zakresie metody teologiczno-fundamentalnej przedstawione zostały następujące główne zagadnienia. 1. Konspekt edukacyjno-psychologicznych warsztatów, 2. Uzasadnienie metodyczne i metodologiczne przyjętej konstrukcji. W konspekcie szczegółowo opisane zostały kolejne kroki, które powinien podjąć prowadzący z pewnymi sugestiami ku czemu dane działania prowadzą. Szerzej zostały podane wnioski, do których prowadzący powinien podprowadzić uczestników warsztatów w obszarze teologii fundamentalnej – jako pomoc w poszukiwaniach celu, całości i sensu – wykorzystano elementy psychologii, filozofii, teologii duchowości. Procedura ćwiczeń przeprowadza uczestnika od pytań o samego siebie do pytań o siebie poprzez relacje z drugim, tak by uświadomić mu możliwość kontaktu z Drugim. W dalszej części przedstawienia opisano próbę odpowiedzi na pytanie „Co było potrzebne, od strony metody, by ten konspekt mógł powstać?” Koniecznym było skonstruowanie swoistej metafory i opracowano narrację, które razem stały się hipotezą wyjaśniającą obejmującą szerokie spektrum badanych relacji, pomiędzy konspektem i procesem jego powstawania a jego twórcą, procesem przeprowadzonych warsztatów a czytelnikiem, prowadzącym warsztaty a uczestnikiem. Na zakończenie przedstawiono ewaluację przeprowadzonych warsztatów.

Kim jestem? Kim się staję? W dialogicznym napięciu JA-TY. Źródła teoretyczne

W niniejszym artykule przedstawiono komponenty wchodzące w skład źródeł teoretycznych, będących podstawą powstania konspektu warsztatów. Treść artykułu nie wychodzi poza obszar metodologii teologicznej. Badania ukazujące przesłanki procesów zaaranżowanych w czasie warsztatów oraz podane wnioski końcowe wynikają z badań przeprowadzonych w polu analiz teologii fundamentalnej. Ta dziedzina teologiczna zakłada interdyscyplinarne łączenie metod i osiągnięć teologii i nauk antropologicznych. W kolejnych odsłonach ukazane zostały trzy aspekty odkrywania ludzkiego JA w dialogicznym napięciu z TY. Dzięki analizie transakcyjnej Erica Berne’a można ukazać, przy pomocy prostych technik edukacyjnych, że człowiek w poznaniu siebie potrzebuje drugiego w każdym aspekcie swego istnienia. Tym, co umożliwia mu bycie z sobą i innymi do zdolność wczucia. Tę kategorię badawczą analizowała Edyta Stein jako podstawę realnych relacji JA-TY, gdzie poprzez TY może zostać określony sam człowiek jako nie-ja, inny, drugi, czy ostatecznie osobowy Bóg. Możliwość zastosowania procesów opartych na wczuciu w przestrzeni relacji wiary doprowadza ku teologii duchowości. W jej ramach wypracowany został model antropologiczny, który widzi człowieka w ciągłym stawaniu się wobec innych i Boga. Przyjęta do badań praktyczno-biblijna antropologia Ignacego Loyoli pozwala na uwiarygodnienie kroków podjętych w czasie warsztatów, tak by nie były manipulacją a służyły wolnemu wyborowi uczestników w świadomym poszukiwaniu sensu i celu istnienia.

Gdy słowo musi być posłuszne dźwiękowi. Librecista Ryszard Wagner i jego Pierścień Nibelunga

Wydział Neofilologii: Instytut Filologii Germańskiej