An Ecolinguistic Perspective on Framing of Animals in Quranic Discourse

Whether animals are of lower rank compared to humans or not is a debatable issue among scholars of various disciplines. However, there is no denying that they play a significant part in sustaining ecological balance on earth. The discourses in this regard play a considerable function in presenting animals in either beneficial or destructive roles. Such studies can contribute to spreading awareness regarding animals’ prominence from religious perspectives. The present study aims to examine the religious discourse concerning the ways animals are framed linguistically. For the said purpose, the Quran (the Holy book for followers of Islam) is chosen to analyze the framing technique used to portray animals concerning target words/ phrases. The identified frames are further described with reference to the ecological perspective. The content analysis technique is used to identify target words that are later used to recognize frames. The findings reveal that animals are most importantly presented in four significant frames: as beings, as benefactors, as ornaments, and as celestial signs. These frames further reflect how animals are represented in various roles, from food sources to valuable possession and from war tools to Godly signs. The beneficial story of animals’ existence as narrated in the Quran provides a comprehensive overview of their role in bio-network.

An Ecolinguistic Perspective on Framing of Animals in Quranic Discourse

Whether animals are of lower rank compared to humans or not is a debatable issue among scholars of various disciplines. However, there is no denying that they play a significant part in sustaining ecological balance on earth. The discourses in this regard play a considerable function in presenting animals in either beneficial or destructive roles. Such studies can contribute to spreading awareness regarding animals’ prominence from religious perspectives. The present study aims to examine the religious discourse concerning the ways animals are framed linguistically. For the said purpose, the Quran (the Holy book for followers of Islam) is chosen to analyze the framing technique used to portray animals concerning target words/ phrases. The identified frames are further described with reference to the ecological perspective. The content analysis technique is used to identify target words that are later used to recognize frames. The findings reveal that animals are most importantly presented in four significant frames: as beings, as benefactors, as ornaments, and as celestial signs. These frames further reflect how animals are represented in various roles, from food sources to valuable possession and from war tools to Godly signs. The beneficial story of animals’ existence as narrated in the Quran provides a comprehensive overview of their role in bio-network.

Audientia sacerdotalis?—Remarks on the Legal Nature of Dispute Resolution by Ecclesiastics in Late Antiquity

The problem of audientia episcopalis in late antiquity has been the subject of extensive research in the past. Previous studies have usually focussed on the legal doctrine, as well as the picture of bishop courts in the light of the literary sources. In contrast, the question of how audientia episcopalis functioned in the legal practice as shown by papyri has caused scholars much difficulty, due to the limited material available as well as the obscure nature of the institution. One could therefore ask: how is it possible that such allegedly common practice of dispute resolution by the bishops—as literary sources make us believe—is so elusive in the papyri? How to explain the simultaneous increase for that period of the papyrological attestations regarding arbitration/mediation carried out by the clergy of lower rank? Could we be dealing with some sort of audientia sacerdotalis functioning in the legal practice? How widespread was in fact the audientia episcopalis, and was this institution homogeneous or rather heterogeneous in nature? The paper presents the attempt to answer these questions by confronting the imperial law with the evidence of legal practice.

Image Denoising Using Low Rank Matrix Approximation in Singular Value Decomposition

The factorization of a matrix into lower rank matrices give solutions to a wide range of computer vision and image processing tasks. The inherent patches or the atomic patches can completely describe the whole image. The lower rank matrices are obtained using different tools including Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), which is typically found in minimization problems of nuclear norms. The singular values obtained will generally be a thresholder to realize the nuclear norm minimization. However, soft-thresholding is performed uniformly on all the singular values that lead to a similar importance to all the patches whether it is principal/useful or not. Our observation is that the decision on a patch (to be principal/useful or not) can be taken only when the application of this minimization is taken into consideration. Thus, in this paper, we propose a new method for image denoising by choosing variable weights to different singular values with a deep noise effect. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed weighted scheme performs better than the state-of-the-art methods.

MAPPING OF THE NW-TRENDING HIDDEN FAULTS FROM ANALYSIS OF THE RELIEF AND GEOPHYSICAL FIELDS IN THE PRIAMURYE REGION

The paper investigates indications of the NW-trending hidden faults in the Priamurye region. Four maijor fault zones and a series of lower-rank faults are mapped, which are indicated by lineaments of the relief, magnetic anomalies and arranged earthquake foci sequences. The NW-trending faults control the block divisibility of the upper part of the lithosphere in the region and are currently seismically active. Two NW-trending hidden faults are characterized by a considerable amount of the seismic energy released which should be accounted for in the seismic hazard assessment of the region.

On classification of super-modular categories of rank 8

We develop categorical and number-theoretical tools for the classification of super-modular categories. We apply these tools to obtain a partial classification of super-modular categories of rank [Formula: see text]. In particular we find three distinct families of prime categories in rank [Formula: see text] in contrast to the lower rank cases for which there is only one such family.

Competitive hierarchies among three species of juvenile coral reef fishes

Interspecific competition is often asymmetric, and it can limit the spatial distributions of competitively inferior species within a community. When asymmetric competition involves 2 or more component species, the ranking of species' competitive abilities may form competitive hierarchies (all species of higher rank out-compete all species of lower rank) or competitive networks (at least 1 species of lower rank out-competes =1 species of higher rank). Expectations of resource monopolization and patterns of distribution and abundance among species in competitive networks are expected to differ from those in competitive hierarchies. We conducted a field experiment to evaluate the relative competitive abilities of juveniles of 3 closely related species of reef fish (bird wrasse Gomphosus varius, fivestripe wrasse Thalassoma quinquevittatum and the sixbar wrasse T. hardwicke) on Moorea, French Polynesia. We controlled for intrinsic variation in survivorship among species and found that competition among these 3 species was highly asymmetric, resulting in a simple competitive hierarchy (sequence of competitive ability from superior to inferior competitors): fivestripe wrasse > bird wrasse > sixbar wrasse. We surveyed densities of the 3 reef fish species on 55 patch reefs and observed significant negative spatial covariation between superior and inferior competitors, consistent with competitive hierarchies that limit the spatial distributions of the inferior species (sixbar wrasse). Our work demonstrates that intense asymmetric competition and the formation of competitive hierarchies may be an important determinant of resource monopolization and patterns of distribution and abundance in reef fishes. © Inter-Research 2013.

Competitive hierarchies among three species of juvenile coral reef fishes

Interspecific competition is often asymmetric, and it can limit the spatial distributions of competitively inferior species within a community. When asymmetric competition involves 2 or more component species, the ranking of species' competitive abilities may form competitive hierarchies (all species of higher rank out-compete all species of lower rank) or competitive networks (at least 1 species of lower rank out-competes =1 species of higher rank). Expectations of resource monopolization and patterns of distribution and abundance among species in competitive networks are expected to differ from those in competitive hierarchies. We conducted a field experiment to evaluate the relative competitive abilities of juveniles of 3 closely related species of reef fish (bird wrasse Gomphosus varius, fivestripe wrasse Thalassoma quinquevittatum and the sixbar wrasse T. hardwicke) on Moorea, French Polynesia. We controlled for intrinsic variation in survivorship among species and found that competition among these 3 species was highly asymmetric, resulting in a simple competitive hierarchy (sequence of competitive ability from superior to inferior competitors): fivestripe wrasse > bird wrasse > sixbar wrasse. We surveyed densities of the 3 reef fish species on 55 patch reefs and observed significant negative spatial covariation between superior and inferior competitors, consistent with competitive hierarchies that limit the spatial distributions of the inferior species (sixbar wrasse). Our work demonstrates that intense asymmetric competition and the formation of competitive hierarchies may be an important determinant of resource monopolization and patterns of distribution and abundance in reef fishes. © Inter-Research 2013.