The Existential Relevance of Art for Human Life

What is the relevance of art for human life? This question can be answered if life is understood from life-performance and art from artworks. From this perspective, the human being – understood as a being in a self-researching process – and the work of art – conceived as an experience-figure – show a structural correspondence: a constitutive unfathomability. Both, human being and art, can only be adequately understood as open processes of their respective self- realization. Because of this correlation and, at the same time, considering their fundamental difference, the aesthetic experience enables the human being to objectify the process of self-research. Thus, the existential relevance of art to life becomes concrete in that the aesthetic experience that makes the artwork the unique unfathomability that it is, reveals itself as an excellent path to the process of self-research, which makes human beings the unique unfathomability that he or she is.

Gendering Madness and Doubling Disability in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre has a well-designed structure of a bildungsroman that focuses on the pursuit of Jane’s desire and ignores the same for Bertha. The conceptual structure conveys a linear discourse to determine a prefixed understanding of Bertha, Jane, and Rochester. In Bertha’s context, the bildungsroman operates to deliver issues of race, gender, and disability in an existential quest to ascertain and establish her madness. There is a well-designed structural correspondence of bildungsroman, interplay of dark and light binary, the desire of Jane against the asexual Bertha, and the metaphor of fire in mapping the doubling. The literary devices serve as a dominant metaphorical barrier to normalcy in Thornfield. The paper considers this authorial viewpoint on Bertha’s sickness as a construct of a parallel gendered and a more potent conceptualisation of madness. In problematising madness, the paper argues a cultural narrative of representation that is affected by the impaired mind of Bertha. It will interrogate how the narrative systematically forges a doubling within which she is objectified, influenced, muted, bounded and characteristically disabled.

Structural Correspondence Between Organizational Theories

Organizational research constitutes a differentiated, complex and fragmented field with multiple contradicting and incommensurable theories that make fundamentally different claims about the social and organizational reality. In contrast to natural sciences, the progress in this field can’t be attributed to the principle of truthlikeness where theories compete against each other and only best theories survive and prove they are closer to the truth and thus demonstrate scientific knowledge accumulation. We defend the structural realist view on the nature of organizational theories in order to demonstrate that despite the multiplicity of isolated and competing explanations of organization-environment relations these theories are still logically compatible and mutually consistent which, in turn, assures theoretical progress in the field. Although postulating different and incompatible ontologies, three most successful organization-environments theories, namely, contingency theory, new institutionalism and population ecology share the same explanations of the relations between organizations and environments at the structural level. Without this principle one would say that what occurs in the field of organization theory is a change rather than a progress.

THE VEDIC «FEET» OF THE GREEK SPHINX

Object of the article: the riddle of the Sphinx and the Vedic riddles. Subject of the article: structural and semantic comparison between the riddle of the Sphinx and the riddles in “Rigveda” and “Yajurveda”. Purpose of research: to show that the scheme of the riddle of the Sphinx about “man”, based on the description of an allegorical creature which is “two-footed, three-footed and fourfooted”, has a structural correspondence in the Vedic ritual-offering formulas, which describe Vedic poetic metres, divided by number of padas (“feet”) in a verse. Research methods: methods of the structural and semantic analysis applied. Results: the author argues that the poetic scheme of the Vedic ritual-offering formulas reflects an Indo-European proto-text, on which the riddle of the Sphinx is based. Field of application: literary studies. Conclusion:The author argues that the description of the Vedic metres in ritual-offering formulas through the allegorical ”two-footed (dvipada), four-footed (catushpada) and three-footed (tripada)”creatures has a structural and semantic correspondence in the riddle of the Sphinx, based on the description of an allegorical creature which is “two-footed, three-footed and four-footed”. The essay suggests that this correspondence between the Vedic formulas and the riddle of the Sphinx allows an alternative interpretation of the Greek riddle on meta-literal level as an allegorical description of poetic forms. The author is indebted to Svetlana Gracheva and Dan Whitman for stimulating discussions and helpful advice.

Modeling and Comparison of Data Obtained by GPR, for Geological / Structural Analysis of a Carbonated Ornamental Rock Quarry - Blocometry Validation - Case Study in Valinho De Fátima, Portugal

Portugal, in the continental and insular territory, has raw geological resources in diversity and quality that are materials for the manufacturing industries, particularly linked to the civil construction, architecture and public works with great weight in its exports, revealing to be one big producer of ornamental stones worldwide. In this industry, the presence of discontinuities, grain size, colour, textural anisotropy and porosity are factors that can determine the economic viability of the exploitations. For this, it is important to develop effective prospecting routines that allow the geological/structural fast analysis and economic potential assessment of the massifs and subsequent correct planning and dimensioning of the exploitations. This work intends to model and integrate data from the ground penetration radar (GPR), together with close-range photogrammetry, derived from an Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. The objective is to identify and determine the spatial distribution of the various elements by modelling the acquired data, as well as verifying the feasibility of the technical disassembly option adopted. We have used GPR as it is non-destructive, fast to deploy, survey, process and interpret. The acquired data were processed using the GPR-SLICE, where a 3D final dataset was obtained and interpreted. GPR and photogrammetric model was integrated and interpreted and validated with direct field observations. The model obtained showed in its upper part, an area corresponding to the presence of sludge from the cut of the rock, followed by a strip that corresponds to the oolitic limestone. Further down to the end of the block, the presence of oolitic limestone with crossed stratification is identifiable. There was a textural and structural correspondence between the GPR data and direct field observations. GPR did not reveal any major morphostructural discontinuity, validating the technical option of choosing the places where the cuts were made for their individualization, as the block was cut clean. The GPR and photogrammetry data integration method revealed to be complementary, where results were obtained easily, fast, and with centimeter accuracy. The same methodology presented, revealed to be cheap and effective for both localized studies and optimization of the overall quarry’s extraction plan and design.

Cross-linguistic metaphor priming in ASL-English bilinguals

Meir’s (2010) Double Mapping Constraint (DMC) states the use of iconic signs in metaphors is restricted to signs that preserve the structural correspondence between the articulators and the concrete source domain and between the concrete and metaphorical domains. We investigated ASL signers’ comprehension of English metaphors whose translations complied with the DMC (Communication collapsed during the meeting) or violated the DMC (The acid ate the metal). Metaphors were preceded by the ASL translation of the English verb, an unrelated sign, or a still video. Participants made sensibility judgments. Response times (RTs) were faster for DMC-Compliant sentences with verb primes compared to unrelated primes or the still baseline. RTs for DMC-Violation sentences were longer when preceded by verb primes. We propose the structured iconicity of the ASL verbs primed the semantic features involved in the iconic mapping and these primed semantic features facilitated comprehension of DMC-Compliant metaphors and slowed comprehension of DMC-Violation metaphors.

Direct Binding of Complementary Symmetric Ligands to DNA Nucleotide Pairs by Means of Transcription Factors

To activate gene expression, the initiation of transcription is a highly regulated process involving the interaction of proteins and DNA nucleotides at the promoter site, which consists of a small number of base pairs. As it involves interactions at the atomic scale, it is challenging to determine the mechanism of binding responsible for the great specificity between the amino acid residuals comprising the transcription binding protein and the DNA nucleotides comprising the promoter. Here, a new approach to characterize the transcription initiation process is developed and verified from analysis of comparative pharmacological efficacy data and elemental modeling. The newly developed description of a mechanism for transcription initiation involves the direct binding of small molecule ligands of approximately twenty carbon atoms, which are both structurally symmetric to DNA nucleotides, and also chemically complementary in its functional groups for interaction with the oxygen element at the carbon two position of thymine and with the phosphodiester chain. The results indicate that the activating ligands are transported to the DNA nucleotide promoter site by protein transcription factors, which serve as delivery vectors, for transfer of the ligand to the DNA nucleotide pairs. The ligands examined in this study include the steroid hormones, synthetic steroid molecules, derivatives of vitamin D, and prostaglandins, particularly PGJ2 and 15d-PGJ2. The transcription factors evaluated include glucocorticoid receptors, VDR, PPAR, and TBP. Through the developments, it is shown that because of the chemically complementary binding of the ligand to DNA nucleotide pairs, the resultant intermolecular complex produces three hydrogen bonds for the A-T and T-A configurations, which matches that of G-C and C-G. The orientation of the nucleotide base pairs is also seen to adjust as an inversion of the nominal position of the nucleobases to a dimer configuration presented via TBP transcription factor. The developments comprise a new approach to characterizing the initiation of the transcription process comprising the direct binding and interaction of ligands with DNA nucleotides as verified through comparative analysis of pharmacological activity and through perfect structural correspondence between the steroid hormone class as ligands with Watson-Crick DNA nucleotide pairings.

POSTPONED DUEL IN “THE SHOT” AS A FACTOR OF STRUCTURE OF TEXT

The postponed shot and doubling the duel are central points of the plot of this tale and its leitmotifs. We show that in a series of episodes this circumstance serves a structural generator, each time reproducing the key leitmotif anew. It includes 1) structural correspondence between the abnormal card game and the abnormal duel, 2) ability to stick a bullet into a bullet, twice demonstrated by Silvio. In addition, the relevance of a duel in the structure of the text reveals itself in relation between numbers 2 and 3. Also, there is a correlation with doubled war motif: it follows from the inner chronology of the tale that Silvio missed Patriotic War of 1812. (We consider his participation in the uprising of eterists as compensation.) The latter circumstance is an example of the “hidden plot” phenomenon that has only recently begun to attract reseacrhers’ attention. The specific feature of a given case consists in that it is not the event but their meaningful absence which is hidden. Also, we find a motif of a horse (overlooked in literature before) and suggest explanation why a narrator, mentioning Silvio’s cap, calls it by the name of its French analogue.