Between Qum and Qayrawān: Unearthing early Shii ḥadı̄th sources

In this article, I develop and test a new methodology of unearthing early Shii ḥadı̄th sources that served as the basis for the later collections of the fourth/tenth century. This method, besides answering the question of historicity, enables us to understand the dissemination of texts across times and regions. As a case-study, I examine what is alleged to have been the first Shii legal ḥadı̄th collection, a work attributed to ʿUbaydullāh b. ʿAlī al-Ḥalabī (d. c. 148/765). By comparing the reports transmitted on the authority of al-Ḥalabī in the Twelver ḥadı̄th compendium originating in Qum, al-Kulaynī's al-Kāfī, and an Ismaili legal ḥadı̄th composition, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān's al-Īḍāḥ, composed in Qayrawān, I demonstrate that both works trace their material to an earlier Kūfan source of the second/eighth century, with each work drawing on the same material independently. A cross-regional textual analysis of later ḥadı̄th compendia, in this case composed by contemporaneous scholars, residing in different regions, affiliated to dissimilar religious persuasions, reveals the transmission of identical material; this finding contributes to our understanding of both geographical transmission of early sources and compositional arrangements of the later ḥadı̄th compendia.

TIMBRAL ALTERNATIONS IN TCHAIKOVSKY’S VIOLIN CONCERTO AS A MULTIFUNCTIONAL SYSTEM

The purpose of the article is to consider the alternations in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as a multifunctional system. The methodology includes score analysis as a way to determine the functions of different instruments in the Concerto and variants of their interaction; stylistic analysis is applied in order to highlight the specific features of the presentation in the orchestra of Tchaikovsky; comparative method allows us to compare the features of the orchestra in different concertos of other composers. The scientific novelty lies in the interpretation of the alternations in the Violin Concerto as an interconnected system with multifaceted influence. This paper aims to examine timbral alternations in the Concerto. On the first layer, there are alternations as a means to expose musical material: the change of timbre becomes an impetus to deploy the theme. On the second layer, there are alternations as a means of expression: a lyrical mood receives a touch of joy, a dramatic component strength, the foreground/background comparisons give a three-dimensional effect. On the third level, the alternations have form-defining function. They mark the end of a section when thematically different but emotionally identical material appears; recall the ‘remote alternations’ (tutti – tutti frame the development in the first movement). On the fourth layer, the alternations reflect Tchaikovsky’s style: his reliance on the strings’ timbers, particular attention to woodwind instruments and the horn, and a number of ‘in-the-orchestra’ soloists. Conclusions. The alternations enhance the concertizing effect, enforce the timbre and texture contrasts, add particular dynamization, and contribute to the active involvement of the orchestra in a development process by making the interaction between the soloist and the orchestra, and within the orchestra itself, much more expressive. Such a diversity of alternations creates a multifunctional system that became a distinctive feature of the Concerto.

Receptor expectations and interlingual translation reception

The fundamental question that this paper addresses is to what extent an individual’s judgment of incoming linguistic stimuli – in the form of a translation product – can be thought of as static and objective, as opposed to dynamic and subjectively constructed. By extension, this article proposes that rather than being viewed (solely) as displaying a set of stable features, the target text can be construed as a cognitive construct that is dynamically shaped. This proposition is tested against the cognitive mechanisms of expectations. I discuss two empirical studies examining how expectations about the authorship of translation, and therefore its characteristics like quality, can influence the audience’s perception of the translation product. The question is examined for written translation (Study 1) and subtitling (Study 2). While in both cases, the central subject of inquiry are linguistic stimuli, in the latter case, these are embedded multimodally. The hypothesis is that generating certain product expectations through the use of linguistic cues will lead the audience to assess the product differently than in a condition where identical material is assessed without cuing or where opposite receptor expectations are generated. It is relevant to note that both experiments were conducted with students whose background included linguistics and translation. Such a participant profile could be associated with a more rigorously principled – and therefore stable – assessment of linguistic stimuli in both monosemiotic and polysemiotic contexts. This, in turn, would make our participants less susceptible to the effects of anticipatory cognition than would be the case with participants without formal training in the relevant fields

A Modified Friction Stir Welding Process Based on Vortex Material Flow

Friction stir welding is a promising solid-state welding technique. However, the issue of tool wear and break restricts its wider industrial application. To avoid the tool wear and break occurring in conventional friction stir welding (FSW), a new modification of the FSW process using a tool made by the identical material as the workpiece has been developed and conducted on pure aluminum. We named this process as Vortex-FSW (VFSW) because it depends on a vortex material flow to realize the welding and joining. The weld macro- and micro-structures are like that in conventional FSW. However, the tool exit-hole in conventional FSW is replaced by a lug boss. The mechanical properties are also equivalent to that in conventional FSW. The principle of this new process is introduced in this paper.

Student Attendance at Pharmacology Lectures and Its Relation to Exam Performance in the Era of Lecture Capture: A Two-Year Analysis.

Background: Students can now often choose to attend live lectures or review recordings of the lectures made using lecture-capture technology. However, data on lecture attendance in such cases is scarce, and there are few comparisons of the learning outcomes of the different learning approaches. This study reports data relevant to this issue. Methods: Attendance data was collected at 13 of 40 voluntary lecture sessions in the Medical Pharmacology course in Fall 2013 (192 students) and Fall 2014 (207 students) by use of an audience-response system. All 40 lectures were recorded using lecture-capture, and students could attend lectures or review the online recordings and PowerPoint files as desired. The data illuminated the features of student lecture attendance and its relation to exam performance. Results: Only 25-31% of students attended any given monitored lecture, and only 12-14% exhibited high attendance (>80%); 41-52% of students did not attend any monitored sessions. On average, exam scores of students with high lecture attendance were significantly higher than those of other students with a significant shift in scores to higher ranks. Exam scores of students with intermediate to low attendance (77-8%) did not differ from those of non-attending students. The exam scoring advantage associated with high attendance remained evident 20 weeks after the Fall semester when students took a comprehensive NBME exam in pharmacology. Conclusions: Only a small fraction of students had high attendance at live voluntary lectures providing foundational material. On average, students with high attendance had higher exam scores even though all students had unlimited access to the identical material on-line. The exam scoring advantage associated with high attendance appeared to be long-lasting. The data indicate that high attendance at live lectures was part of a very successful learning approach for some students.

Hesiod and Early Mythography

This chapter explores the ways in which early mythography resonates with Hesiodic. In doing this, it goes beyond the question of whether certain narratives in Hesiod’s poetry (esp. the myth of the five human races) can be viewed as proto-historical accounts, a question posed by earlier scholarship. Rather, the focus lies on the discursive strategies shared by Hesiod and some of the fragmentary early mythographers. These strategies indicate a similarity in approach between Hesiod and the mythographers that can be attributed to the similar (or indeed sometimes identical) material with which they work. It is argued that Hesiod can be considered an exponent of historie who is epistemologically conscious and that he is a thinker who for the first time, as far as we know, raises questions and engages with material in a way that resonates with the intellectual developments brought about by Hecataeus and his peers.

Adhesive-related warping of thin wooden bi-layers

Warping of layered wood-based panels is still a challenging problem in the development of thin engineered wood products. Wood as an anisotropic and hydrophilic material tends to change its volume and mechanical properties with changing moisture content. Besides the wood components, also the mechanical properties of certain adhesives are sensitive to moisture changes. A moisture load onto the adhered wood is resulting in different stress and strain states between the adherends. It is expected that adhesives with different moisture-related properties participate differently to this interaction. To observe an adhesive-related warping, thin spruce/HDF (Picea abies and high-density fibreboard) bi-layers with identical material geometries were manufactured under laboratory conditions, using different wood adhesive systems, which are currently used in furniture and flooring industry [polyurethane (PUR), emulsion polymer isocyanate (EPI), polyvinyl acetate (PVAc), urea formaldehyde (UF) and ultra-low emitting formaldehyde amino adhesive (ULEF)]. The bi-layers were exposed to certain relative humidity conditions, and the resulting deformation was measured with a high-precision laser distance detector. Moisture-dependent warping of the bi-layers was obtained in relation to the used adhesive systems. As a result of the study, it can be shown that initial warping after panel manufacturing strongly depends on the adhesive curing characteristics and, especially, on the amount of water that is released into the wood adherend. For the post-setting panel warping, a differentiation into two adhesive groups became visible: rigid and flexible adhesives. Rigid adhesives (UF and ULEF) showed a higher degree of warping compared to the group of flexible adhesives (PUR, EPI and PVAc).

Наноструктурированные покрытия ITO/SiO-=SUB=-2-=/SUB=-

The influence of a SiO_2 layer deposited onto nanostructured transparent conductive films of indium and tin oxide (ITO) on their optical characteristics is investigated. For this purpose, SiO_2 films of various thicknesses are deposited by magnetron sputtering on samples with ITO films containing whiskers of preferentially vertical orientation and possessing steadily decreasing reflectance. It is shown that this makes it possible to attain noticeable coating antireflection under the condition of the uniform overgrowth of ITO whiskers by the SiO_2 layer. The influence of the SiO_2 layer on the optical characteristics of a dense unstructured ITO film is also investigated. The results for structured and unstructured ITO/SiO_2 coatings with identical material mass contents are compared. It is noted that due to the liability of ITO material to degradation during operation in the composition of transparent conductive contacts, the results can also be interesting for the formation of coatings more resistant to the effect of the environment.

The Romance Verb

This book is the first ever comprehensive comparative–historical survey of patterns of alternation in the Romance verb that appear to be autonomously morphological in the sense that, although they can be shown to be persistent through time, they have long ceased to be conditioned by any phonological or functional determinant. Some of these patterns are well known in Romance linguistics, while others have scarcely been noticed. The sheer range of phenomena that participate in them far surpasses what Romance linguists had previously realized. The patterns constitute a kind of abstract leitmotif, which runs through the history of the Romance languages and confers on them a distinctive morphological phsyiognomy. Although intended primarily as a novel contribution to comparative–historical Romance linguistics, the book considers in detail the status of patterns that appear to be, in the terminology of Mark Aronoff, ‘morphomic’: a matter of ‘morphology by itself’, unsupported by determining factors external to the morphological system. Particular attention is paid to the problem of their persistence, self-replication, and reinforcement over time. Why do abstract morphological patterns that quite literally do not make sense display such diachronic robustness? The evidence suggests that speakers, faced with different ways of expressing semantically identical material, seek out distributional templates into which those differences can be deployed. In Romance, the only available templates happen to be morphomic, morphologically accidental effects of old sound changes or defunct functional conditionings. Those patterns are accordingly exploited and reinforced by being made maximally predictable.

THE GARDEN AS THE PLACE OF THE ENCOUNTER OF GOD AND ISRAEL AND ITS PLACE IN (HI-)STORY AND SPACE: SONG 4:16–5:1 IN THE RECEPTION OF RABBINIC MIDRASHIM

Song Rab. 4:16–5:1, Num. Rab. 13, Pesiq. Rab. 5, and Lev. Rab. 9, which offer interpretations of Song 4:16–5:1, are to a high degree made up of the same fixed text passages. They are, however, characterised by different selections, different versions, and different ways in which they organise the shared material by means of different models of Israel’s remembered history, which serve as “hypertexts”. Differing interpretations of Song 4:16–5:1, and especially the understanding of the significance of the garden in the Song, are linked with the midrashim’s differing interpretations of Israel’s remembered history. The way in which identical material is used by these different midrashim to make different statements makes them a good example of the handling of traditional material by haggadic rabbinic midrashim.