Visibility Threshold: Some Considerations on Data Mining Applied to the Study of Eblaite Society

Accounting is a routine activity. Through repetition, the scribes of the Ebla Archives (Syria, 24th cent. BCE) have been able to record thousands of transactions. They organized and stored accounting data referred to more than thirty years of the Palace G activities. The recurring textual patterns characterizing the administrative corpus are a byproduct of this routine-based approach. The ability to see recurring patterns in the textual record is fundamental when dealing with an administrative corpus: however, this ability fails when the patterns are buried in data. In this paper, I argue that theoretical aspects of data mining are not far from theoretical and methodological tenets of the historical approach. Data mining is a useful technique for the identification of document clusters and relevant information which would otherwise remain hidden. Furthermore, textual pattern recognition is critical to address topics such as the study of society: belonging to a category of complex problems, any socio-historical investigation requires dealing with multiple interconnected variables. However, not all research topics require such an approach. I define the line beyond which digital approaches are extremely useful (if not indispensable) as 'visibility threshold’. The position of this interface is relative and subjective.

Captain Aguilera and filicide: an attachment-based exploration

This article aims to explore a constellation of individual-attachment, family-attachment, and group-attachment experiences, as well as other psychosocial, cultural, and political factors, which contributed to the dual filicide perpetrated by Captain Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro—a count, landowner, cavalryman, and propaganda press officer for General Francisco Franco’s army during the Spanish Civil War. Learning from Luis Arias González and, above all, Paul Preston’s biographies of Captain Aguilera, the article will employ a combined methodology of historical investigation, psychiatric clinical formulations, and group analysis. In doing so, it will take into account a highly complex context of brutal group dynamics of national depression and exaltation, unresolved trauma, military rebellion, war, genocide, holocaust, and dictatorship.

Investigação histórica do sufixo -eir- na nomeação de vegetais em língua portuguesa

A Historical Investigation of the Suffix -eir- for the Naming of Plants in the Portuguese Language. The Latin suffix -ari-, used as a creator of adjectives, developed several meanings during the period of spoken late Latin, as well as in the formation of the Romance languages. One of those meanings, present in the Portuguese suffix -eiro/ -eira, is associated with tree names, based on the name of the corresponding fruit. Quite productive in current modern Portuguese, that suffix was always linked to the denomination of plants in general, some of them not necessarily related to edible fruits or even to fruits. Similarities are found between the Portuguese derivations and other Romance languages. In this text, those similarities were investigated from a historical-comparative point of view. The high convergence in the western Romance languages can be motivated both by a common Latin heritage as by further loanwords, however during the European expansion in the sixteenth century, new plant names were known from the New World and their naming was based on words derived by the same suffix. Keywords: suffixation, Romance linguistics, botanical popular naming, historical morphology, morphological productivity.

Hyperbole and emotionalisation: Escalation of pragmatic effects of proverb and metaphor in the “Brexit” debate

(How) Can the use of hyperbole in metaphorical idioms and scenarios contribute to an increase in emotionalisation of public debates? Using a research corpus of quotations from British politicians speeches and interviews and of press texts 2016-2020, this paper investigates hyperbolic formulations in Brexit-related applications of the proverb You cannot have your cake and eat it and related scenarios of national liberation, which appear to have strongly boosted emotionalised public debates. For instance, Brexit proponents reversal of the cake proverb into the assertion, We can have our cake and eat it, and their figurative interpretation of Brexit as a war of liberation (against the EU) triggered highly emotional reactions: triumphant affirmation among followers, fear and resentment among opponents. The paper argues that the combination of figurative speech (proverb, metaphor) with hyperbole heightened the emotional and polemical impact of the pro-Brexit argument. Whilst this effect may be deemed to have been rhetorically successful in the short term (e.g. in referendum and election campaigns), its long-term effect on political discourse is more ambivalent, for it leads to a polarisation and radicalisation of political discourse in Britain (as evidenced, for instance, in the massive use of hyperbole in COVID-19 debates). The study of hyperbole as a means of emotionalisation thus seems most promising as part of a discourse-historical investigation of socio-pragmatic effects of figurative (mainly, metaphorical) language use, rather than as an isolated, one-off rhetorical phenomenon.

SIGHT-GLASS DEGRADATION IN UREA CARBAMATE SOLUTION

In the industrial environment, a sight glass acts as a gauge for the fluid level in a pressure vessel. Sight glass must have the following physical properties: clarity (clear enough to view the fluid in the vessel), hardness (not easily broken), thermal shock resistance, and corrosion resistance. A historical investigation of the equipment placed in the High-Pressure Decomposer (HPD) unit of the Urea Plant-X and Plant-Y has a pressure of 17 Bar and a temperature of 124-155oC, yielded an analysis of sight glass degradation in carbamate solution. The sight glass that was installed is soda-lime fused glass. The average is based on the equipment's history.

Curious Architecture: Felines, Stairs and Human Affairs: What Is Architecture Made Of?

<p>The presence and reconciliation of the poetic with the pragmatic is deemed essential if any constructed endeavour in our built environment is to be termed architecture. This thesis argues that if architecture is that which offers us the ability to inhabit space and create place via the deliberate instigation of spatial, sensory, physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual experience that engages us, communicates meaning and supports our lives beneficially, then architects do not currently and have not considered the stair historically, to be architecture. This thesis posits that historically and contemporaneously architects have treated and continue to treat the stair as either a pragmatic but tiresome necessity to be afforded as little attention as possible or as a kind of object-plaything that if it must be present, should be exploited for its visual qualities and symbolic connotations, no matter how fanciful or how meaningless the results. This thesis argues that as a result of these paradoxical but equally superficial treatments, and the length of time over which we have subjected the stair to them, its nature is now so indeterminate that not only do we as architects not question this treatment, we no longer even notice it. It is argued that the consequences of this indifference are the loss of opportunity to identify and examine the potential of the stair to offer us architectural, in the sense of inhabitory, experience of worth and meaning. The aim of this thesis therefore is to demonstrate that the stair, when examined from the perspective of place, rather than just space, offers many possibilities with regard to meaningful inhabitation. This is achieved through the use of two methods. A historical investigation and analysis is first conducted to trace, document and explain the development and use of the stair, to understand the causes for our superficial treatment of it, the stair's consequent indeterminate existence at the present time, and our apparent indifference to this. The knowledge gained is used to inform the second method of investigation, that of devising and conducting a series of design experiments aimed at apprehending the stair from the position of architecture as inhabitable place. The experiments demonstrate an alternative approach to consideration of the stair that reveal its unrealised potential to contribute to meaningful architectural, inhabitory, experience, and so enrich our day to day lives.</p>

Curious Architecture: Felines, Stairs and Human Affairs: What Is Architecture Made Of?

<p>The presence and reconciliation of the poetic with the pragmatic is deemed essential if any constructed endeavour in our built environment is to be termed architecture. This thesis argues that if architecture is that which offers us the ability to inhabit space and create place via the deliberate instigation of spatial, sensory, physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual experience that engages us, communicates meaning and supports our lives beneficially, then architects do not currently and have not considered the stair historically, to be architecture. This thesis posits that historically and contemporaneously architects have treated and continue to treat the stair as either a pragmatic but tiresome necessity to be afforded as little attention as possible or as a kind of object-plaything that if it must be present, should be exploited for its visual qualities and symbolic connotations, no matter how fanciful or how meaningless the results. This thesis argues that as a result of these paradoxical but equally superficial treatments, and the length of time over which we have subjected the stair to them, its nature is now so indeterminate that not only do we as architects not question this treatment, we no longer even notice it. It is argued that the consequences of this indifference are the loss of opportunity to identify and examine the potential of the stair to offer us architectural, in the sense of inhabitory, experience of worth and meaning. The aim of this thesis therefore is to demonstrate that the stair, when examined from the perspective of place, rather than just space, offers many possibilities with regard to meaningful inhabitation. This is achieved through the use of two methods. A historical investigation and analysis is first conducted to trace, document and explain the development and use of the stair, to understand the causes for our superficial treatment of it, the stair's consequent indeterminate existence at the present time, and our apparent indifference to this. The knowledge gained is used to inform the second method of investigation, that of devising and conducting a series of design experiments aimed at apprehending the stair from the position of architecture as inhabitable place. The experiments demonstrate an alternative approach to consideration of the stair that reveal its unrealised potential to contribute to meaningful architectural, inhabitory, experience, and so enrich our day to day lives.</p>

Historical Investigation of Fowl Adenovirus Outbreaks in South Korea from 2007 to 2021: A Comprehensive Review

Fowl adenoviruses (FAdVs) have long been recognized as critical viral pathogens within the poultry industry, associated with severe economic implications worldwide. This specific group of viruses is responsible for a broad spectrum of diseases in birds, and an increasing occurrence of outbreaks was observed in the last ten years. Since their first discovery forty years ago in South Korea, twelve antigenically distinct serotypes of fowl adenoviruses have been described. This comprehensive review covers the history of fowl adenovirus outbreaks in South Korea and updates the current epidemiological landscape of serotype diversity and replacement as well as challenges in developing effective broadly protective vaccines. In addition, transitions in the prevalence of dominant fowl adenovirus serotypes from 2007 to 2021, alongside the history of intervention strategies, are brought into focus. Finally, future aspects are also discussed.