bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Speakers and Sleepers: Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker , Whitman, and the Performance of Americanness
Authors: Moraru Christian
Published: July 2009

Focusing on Chang-rae Lee 1995 “post-ethnic” classic Native Speaker , this article dwells on the novel’s “legend” theme to suggest that Lee’s book itself is a legend twice: first, because it furnishes the “legible” appearance, the story in which Lee comes before his readers, and second, because this story itself appears, is seen, and lends itself to reading (is made legible ) via a legend in the etymological sense of the word. Embedded in the novel, this “key” warrants a certain reading of the book. Further, Moraru offers that the key is fundamentally Whitmanesque and by the same token central to Lee’s engagement with America’s tradition and culture. According to the critic, Whitman, the “legendary” native precursor, helps Lee lay his own claim to American writer status; Korean-born Lee becomes a “natural,” naturalizes himself into America and its letters via the emblematically American, Whitman intertext lodged inside his novel.
Pride and Prestige: Jane Austen and the Professions
Authors: Drum Alice
Published: July 2009

This essay focuses on Jane Austen’s portrayal of the growing prestige of the professions in her later and final novels, Mansfield Park (1814) , Emma (1816) , and Persuasion (1818). While Austen’s early novels focus on a mainly leisure class, the gentry and minor aristocracy, the later novels reflect England’s changing landscape during the early nineteenth century. The country was moving steadily then from a primarily agrarian way of life to a culture where industry and profession would assume equal if not paramount importance. Although Austen’s novels are often celebrated as portraits of a stable ordered society, each of the later works reveals, in progressive stages, the changing and increasingly significant role that the professions play. No longer simply a source of income for second sons, the professions evolve into part of the identity of professional gentlemen and, finally, in Persuasion as an entry for middle-rank professionals into gentry circles.
“Other and More Terrible Evils”: Anticapitalist Rhetoric in Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and Proslavery Propaganda
Authors: Dowling David
Published: July 2009

Much more than a straightforward document supporting black uplift and condemning northern racism, showing “that slavery’s shadows fall even there,” Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig (1859) replicates the anticapitalist rhetoric common to proslavery propaganda of the era. Wilson fully exploited proslavery’s best arguments against the North for her own rhetorical purpose of exposing northern racism. She would have been attracted to such arguments not only because they aptly described her own life as a New England mulatta and indentured servant, but also because they were extremely salable in the form of popular fiction, thus supporting her objective of selling the novel to feed herself and her ailing son. I do not discredit Wilson, but show how resourceful she was in appropriating for her own antiracist polemical purpose the most potent argument the South had against the North at the time in George Fitzhugh’s Sociology for the South (1854), Cannibals All, or Slaves without Masters (1857), and Caroline Rush’s North and South, or Slavery and its Contrasts (1852), which bring out Our Nig ’s anti-market tropes.
Shakespeare, Faulkner, and the Expression of the Tragic
Authors: Chesney Duncan McColl
Published: July 2009

The article traces a rhetorical relationship between William Faulkner’s prose style in Absalom, Absalom! and the language of William Shakespeare’s tragic period, epitomized in Hamlet , through the trope of hendiadys —one through two—and other figures of coupling, doubling, and yoking. The major claim is that Shakespeare gives to the English language a particular, contorted form of expression in his great tragic works that subsequent writers, preeminently Faulkner, adopt willy-nilly when confronting the primal and conflictual bases of tragic predicaments. In Faulkner’s case, the racial and sexual crimes and tensions at the heart of his region’s history are expressed in his most brilliant and contorted text through an unusual use of figures of doubling that has not attracted proper critical attention to date. The article addresses this lack, and speculates about the nature of tragedy itself and its necessarily difficult expression in any language or literary tradition.
“Bodied Forth in Words”: Sylvia Plath’s Ecopoetics
Authors: Knickerbocker Scott
Published: July 2009

Plath demonstrates a combined interest in the texture of the natural world and the texture of language, which in her poems enacts and does not merely represent that world. Her unfortunate categorization as a “confessional” poet as well as critics’ obsession with her biography have resulted in, on one hand, an underestimation of Plath’s engagement with the “real world” beyond her subjectivity, and on the other hand, an insufficient consideration of the craft and formal properties of her poems. She was, from an early age, drawn to the natural world, although she was equally fascinated by the sounds of language. Plath’s sense of irony and linguistic awareness, that is, puts her in a different category from that of a mere nature lover. Her poetry derives its power from the generative friction between speakers and a nonhuman world that resists figurative appropriation. For Plath, this resistance is itself to be figured forth, creating the formal reverberations with which her poems still startle us.
“Energetic Space”: The Experience of Literature and Learning
Authors: Takolander Maria
Published: July 2009

This essay is part of an interdisciplinary research project into literary aesthetics and its relationship with pedagogy. The paper brings cognitive and evolutionary scientific perspectives to bear on literary and cultural theory to address the aesthetic effect (defined as the transporting and transformative power of the literary text) and its potential personal or civic benefits. The paper offers non-transcendentalist explanations for the aesthetic experience, viewing it less as a privileged category of feeling than as an experience available to all symbolic beings. The paper also proposes an original thesis about the virtual and transformative space of reading as one that ultimately epitomises intellectual freedom. The inquiry is lent urgency by the current cultural and political climate in which not only literature but also literary studies, despite its long association with education and its prominent place in the Culture Wars, is in institutional decline.
Progressive Aspect, the Verbal Prefix meN-, and Stative Sentences in Malay
Authors: Soh Hooi Ling , Nomoto Hiroki
Published: July 2009

This paper offers a new perspective to the study of the verbal prefix meN- by investigating its aspectual properties. We claim that, like the progressive, the prefix meN- in Malay is incompatible with sentences that describe states. This result is compatible with an analysis of meN- as a progressive viewpoint aspectual marker, though it is also possible that meN- shares with the progressive a meaning component that makes them both incompatible with states. We show that the incompatibility of meN- with states is found in both intransitive and transitive sentences. On the basis of their shared restriction, we argue that meN- in intransitive and meN- in transitive sentences should not be treated as distinct morphemes, as some previous researchers either have assumed or must assume. The result thus adds a new data point for a better understanding of meN- , and enables us to narrow down the competing analyses of meN- .
Morphological Conditions on Regular Sound Change?: A Reanalysis of *l-loss in Paamese and Southeast Ambrym
Authors: Blevins Juliette , Lynch John
Published: July 2009

Northern Paamese and Southeast Ambrym, two languages of Central Vanuatu, share a set of sound changes involving vocalization and loss of *l. One subpart of this sound change results in loss of *l word-initially before nonhigh vowels. An interesting aspect of this sound change is that it appears to apply in all word classes except verbs. Indeed, Crowley (1997) suggests that Northern Paamese *l-loss is a clear case of sound change with grammatical conditioning. In this paper we suggest that phonological and morphological aspects of verbal inflectional paradigms have given rise to the apparent exceptionality of *l-loss in these two languages. Phonological factors result in continuation of *l, while the structure of inflectional paradigms has given rise to analogical restoration of initial /l/ in all verbs where it is expected to be lost. Under this analysis, initial *l-loss can be seen to have applied without exception, and without grammatical conditioning.
A Study of Triple Verb Serialization in Four Formosan Languages
Authors: Yeh Maya Yuting , Huang Shuanfan
Published: July 2009

Most previous studies on serial verb constructions (SVC) in Austronesian languages have focused almost exclusively on two-verb constructions. In this study, we examine serial verb constructions involving three or more verbs in four Formosan languages—Kavalan, Saisiyat, Squliq Atayal, and Tsou—focusing our attention on the type of verb serialization that observes the same-subject condition. Action or motion verbs are found to be the only attested final verb in an SVC in these languages. General strategies for triple verb serialization result when any two types of the nonfinal verbs in a two-verb SVC—namely, modal, emotion, evaluative/manner, motion, or “adverbial” verbs—occur before the final action/motion constituent verb in some specific linear order, while Tsou and Kavalan recruit, in addition, one or two types of “sentential adverbial” verbs and degree or quantifier verbs in a language- specific triple verb serialization strategy. A consistent ordering pattern of the various types of verbs is found in all of the languages studied. Quadruple verb serialization, found only in Tsou and Kavalan, results when certain subtypes of “adverbial” verbs occur in combination with certain other subtypes. Our findings are also consonant with a central tenet in theories of construction grammar, that constructions in languages are not broad syntactic templates, but are typically lexically skewed schemas and formulas.
Another Universal Bites the Dust: Northwest Mekeo Lacks Coronal Phonemes
Authors: Blevins Juliette
Published: July 2009

On the basis of cross-linguistic comparison, many universals have been proposed concerning the structure of phonological inventories. One universal of this kind states that every phonological system has coronal phonemes. In this study, Northwest Mekeo, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea, is shown to be a counterexample. Northwest Mekeo lacks coronal phonemes, though surface coronals are found as predictable allophones of velar phonemes, and in some recent loans.
The Position of the Languages of Eastern Indonesia: A Reply to Donohue and Grimes
Authors: Blust Robert
Published: July 2009

Donohue and Grimes (2008) question the validity of the claims (1) that most of the Austronesian languages of eastern Indonesia fall into a Central Malayo-Polynesian (CMP) subgroup that appears to continue a prehistoric dialect chain, and (2) that Central Malayo-Polynesian and Eastern Malayo-Polynesian form a larger Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) subgroup. Some of their objections are valid and welcome, but most of the counterarguments they present are based on an approach to the data that diverges sharply from the standard use of the Comparative Method of linguistics, and in certain crucial cases from generally accepted scientific method. A reexamination of individual comparisons shows that many of the exclusively shared innovations that they dismiss stand up to close scrutiny. This is particularly true of CEMP, and while it is not true of CMP, the evidence for geographically extensive diffusion among the CMP languages strongly suggests that all or most of them once formed a dialect chain.
The Use of Language Data in Comparative Research: A Note on Blust (2008) and Onvlee (1984)
Authors: Klamer Marian
Published: July 2009

This squib corrects and explain errors in the representation, interpretation, and analysis of Kambera data used in Blust (2008). By highlighting the problems with the Kambera data, some pitfalls in the comparativist's task of using others’ descriptions of primary data are identified. The primary source of Blust's Kambera lexical data is Onvlee (1984), a dictionary containing about 6,000 entries. Some background information about this source is given in order to evaluate its usefulness for comparative research. More generally, this squib stresses the crucial importance of including detailed metadata in synchronic linguistic descriptions of primary data, as well as in comparative studies.
Information Structure in Abma
Authors: Schneider Cynthia
Published: July 2009

This paper examines the information structure of Abma, an Oceanic language of Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. Abma has four main syntactic strategies for manipulating the referential status of NPs while at the same time maintaining textual continuity: these are (1) constituent order, (2) syntactic-pragmatic marking, (3) phrasal movement, and (4) tail-head linkage. These approaches are examined individually, but also from the perspective of the larger, integrated system within which they operate. Constituent order is fairly rigid, but speakers are able to get around this constraint by taking advantage of special marking and sentence constructions that affect NP referentiality and information flow.
The Syntax of Prefix Concord in Saaroa: Restructuring and Multiple Agreement
Authors: Li Chao-Lin
Published: July 2009

This paper investigates the syntax of prefix concord and offers a principled explanation of various syntactic restrictions on prefix concord constructions in Saaroa. First, I argue for a structural constraint on the prefix concord effect: this effect can only occur within the v P-level projection. Second, I show that prefix concord constructions display the core properties of restructuring constructions (e.g., long NP movement and clitic climbing), but I also argue against a serial verb construction analysis, in contrast to Tsuchida (2000) and Adelaar (2004). Third, I propose that the concord effect is a reflex of Multiple Agreement (cf. Hiraiwa 2001, 2005; Chomsky 2004): under the Multiple Agree framework, I propose that the prefix concord effect is the morphological realization of multiple checking/valuation of a formal feature and that the intervening effect on prefix concord constructions results from the feature-spreading conflict. Finally, I argue that various restrictions on Saaroa prefix concord constructions are deducible from attested universal conditions, namely the phase impenetrability condition and the feature activity condition.
Clause Order and Information Structure in Cheke Holo
Authors: Palmer Bill
Published: July 2009

Cheke Holo (Northwest Solomonic, Solomon Islands) displays considerable clause order variation, with SVO, OVS, VSO, and VOS all attested. In addition, arguments are frequently not overtly expressed, while some arguments may be marked with the preposed particle si . This paper investigates these issues in terms of information structure by examining each in its discourse context. It concludes that the pragmatically neutral order in Cheke Holo is VSO; that a single preverbal topic position exists, accounting for SVO and OVS; and that focused arguments are located in clause-final position, accounting for VOS. It finds that continued topics are always expressed by topic-drop (that is, elision), and that preverbal position is reserved for contrastive topics and switch topics, although in certain specific contexts, switch topics may instead be dropped. The paper concludes that preposed si is confined to main clauses and is a focus marker for arguments and adjuncts in clause-final position, but that another particle si , with a variant sini , occurs following, not preceding, a sentence-initial focused constituent that can range in size from an argument to an entire clause. On the basis of the analysis presented, Cheke Holo demonstrates that focused arguments need not be new information, as often assumed, but merely need to be unpredictable in the discourse context, allowing for discourse-given or context-given arguments in contrastive focus.
The Absent Elegy: Performing Trauma in The Winter's Tale
Authors: Sherman Donovan
Published: July 2009

This article addresses the current intersection of literary- and performance-based studies of Shakespeare's plays through the lens of The Winter's Tale . It reads the play as a complex and profound exploration of the interplay, and possible incommensurability, of performance and text in which the boundaries between the theatrical and literary event are broken down, serving as a marker for the study of Renaissance literature in general. Drawing on the field of trauma theory, the article traces the development of Leontes's crisis of ontological and subjective coherence, positing it as ingrained in the play's negotiation of the border between performance and text. A focus on  The Winter's Tale's narrative preoccupation with the infliction of and attempted recovery from an event of loss affords a reading of the underexamined figure of Leontes's son, Mamillius, as an unstable figure of narrative re-inscription and recovery, who disturbs, in an emphatically theatrical way, the logic of the play through his embodiment of loss itself. By positioning this figure in conjunction with the play's climactic 'statue' scene, the article reveals the play's presentation of a distinctly posttraumatic process, in which, through the statue's reconciliation of signifier and referent, it overwrites its own theatricality with new systems of literary legibility. In doing so, the article argues,  The Winter's Tale  offers a question of the constantly intermingling modes of performance and literature.
"Strike up the drum": The Use of Music in the Boyd History Cycle
Authors: Heijes Coen
Published: July 2009

This article discusses Michael Boyd's 2008 staging of Shakespeare's history cycle at the RSC, exploring the ways in which music was used and how it consistently connected, confirmed, and subverted the action on stage. Boyd's production - only the third UK staging of the eight-play cycle in the last fifty years - used music, both diegetic and exegetic, with an unprecedented degree of complexity and sophistication: as a narrative instrument to draw connections between the individual plays, an inflection of other creative choices such as doubling and use of props, and a means of commentating on the onstage action and characters. By drawing on personal observations based on four or more viewings of each individual play and three viewings of the cycle as a whole, along with interviews with cast and creative, critical reviews, literature, rehearsal drafts, production notes and the production's musical score, the article seeks to establish music's pivotal role in the conveyance of meaning throughout the eight plays. It addresses Boyd's decision to stage the plays both in order of the narrative and in the order of composition, focusing on the latter and, in doing so, identifies newly distinguishable interconnecting elements between the plays that are underpinned by their specially-composed musical score. In departing from scholarship that has focused primarily on the diegetic use of music in Shakespeare's plays, the article ultimately concentrates on the production's exegetic score, examining its role in complicating and adding layers of meaning to the individual plays and the cycle as a whole.
Shakespearean Relocations: The Final Scene of John Madden's Shakespeare in Love
Authors: Blakeley John
Published: July 2009

This essay focuses upon the conclusion to Shakespeare in Love (1998), in order to consider the significance of its echoes of, and borrowings from, The Tempest . Two interpretive paradigms are engaged in the film's conclusion: namely, that The Tempest is Shakespeare's play about the new world, and that it is his 'farewell to the stage'. These commonplace notions about the play's meaning discerned in the conclusion to the film serve to reinforce its consolidation of Hollywood's new-found confidence in the production of Shakespeare related cinema at the end of the millennium.
The Tobacco Museum of the City of Kavala
Authors: Rentetzi Maria
Published: July 2009

In the mid-nineteenth century, Kavala, a small city by the sea in northern Greece, developed into one of the most important tobacco processing centers in Balkans, attracting the commercial interest of the Habsburg Empire, England, France, Egypt, and even the United States. Today the city hosts a Tobacco Museum which honors this history through a number of artifacts and photographs illustrating parts of the city’s technological and sociopolitical past, and also through enactments of the rural culture of the tobacco cultivator and the urban culture of the tobacco worker. This exhibit review walks the reader through the museum’s galleries. To historians of technology the museum is a treasure since those with a strong interest in mechanical detail have the chance to see all of the artifacts in use. They can also find machines and objects displayed here that rarely appear elsewhere. Although the museum succeeds in communicating the importance of material objects in people’s lives, its illustrated narrative of the technological and partly social history of tobacco processing in Kavala conveys a linear view of technological progress and a conventional, nonsociological shaping of technological artifacts.
Reconstructing Transportation: Linking Tolls and Transit for Place-Based Mobility
Authors: Dyble Louise Nelson
Published: July 2009

Drawing on the history of four independent transportation agencies, this essay suggests models for place-based systems that promote urban mobility. It accounts for the adversarial relationship between contemporary champions of automobile-oriented infrastructure and mass transit advocates by tracing the political and institutional history of passenger transport in America. It also points out several significant exceptions to the overall pattern of modal separation and competition, describing how revenue from bridges and tunnels in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area was harnessed to finance and support complementary mass transit. The author notes how tolls and fees paid by drivers subsidized transit that reduced traffic congestion and supported urban vitality. Observing that regime change and economic stimulus spending now presents a rare window of opportunity for change, the author calls for reconceptualizing policy and reconstructing institutions to support efficient, equitable transportation systems that transcend modes and promote sustainable urban development.
The Emergence of the Professional Patent Practitioner
Authors: Swanson Kara W.
Published: July 2009

From the early republic to the present, the social networks created by successful American inventors to support their technologies have included individuals who have helped inventors mobilize the legal system. The role of the patent practitioner in this joint history of law and technology has remained largely hidden behind the myth of the lone inventor and the drama of courtroom patent battles. This paper traces patent solicitation as a profession from the beginning of the modern patent examination system in 1836 through a mid-twentieth-century Supreme Court battle over the requisite expertise for what had become an indispensable aspect of invention. Shaped by the changing patent law and patent office practices, the history of this profession also reveals the linked history of lawyers and engineers, as both groups sought to lay claim to this new occupation, and the process by which this occupation, like patents themselves, became a legal-technical hybrid.
What You Say Is What You Get: Policy Discourse and the Regulation of Canada’s First Domestic Communications Satellite System
Authors: Pavri Vera
Published: July 2009

This article examines the Canadian satellite-policy debates that occurred in 1969 prior to the passage of the Telesat Canada Act. This Act created a new corporation that would own and operate Canada’s first domestic satellite system. Various interest groups vied for control over satellites, using strategic rhetoric to influence how the system would be handled within policy circles. This rhetoric helped to simplify complex issues, limit options, and encourage consensus among policy actors that had very different ideas about the same technology. Key decisions included regulating satellites like microwave networks and labeling the new corporation a carrier’s carrier, natural monopoly, and public utility. In addition, the new corporation was to complement existing telecom networks and would not compete with them for business. The choices made about Canadian satellites thus were bound up with the ways in which this technology was conceived of and discussed, with far-reaching results for Canada’s industrial and communications policy.
“A Large Canvas”: Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization
Authors: Ceruzzi Paul E.
Published: July 2009

The two-volume survey of the history of technology,

Technology in Western Civilization

, edited by Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr., is reviewed 42 years after its publication by Oxford University Press. The reviewer concludes that the book helped establish the academic field of the history of technology, along with the founding of the Society for the History of Technology and its journal,

Technology and Culture

, in 1958–1959. Melvin Kranzberg was instrumental in this endeavor, and his views have shaped the discipline of the history of technology to the present day. For this book, Kranzberg and Pursell’s editorial direction established an approach to the history of technology that broke from the deterministic, linear notion of technology’s “impact” on society. The seventy contributors, besides the two editors, provide not only a survey that holds up well, but also a 1960s-era snapshot of a positivistic view of technology, which one seldom finds in later decades.
Heterogeneous Kinetics and Pharmacology of Synaptic Inhibition in the Chick Auditory Brainstem
Authors: Kuo Sidney P. , Bradley Laura A. , Trussell Laurence O.
Published: July 2009

Identification of shared features between avian and mammalian auditory brainstem circuits has provided much insight into the mechanisms underlying early auditory processing. However, previous studies have highlighted an apparent difference in inhibitory systems; synaptic inhibition is thought to be slow and GABAergic in birds but to have fast kinetics and be predominantly glycinergic in mammals. Using patch-clamp recordings in chick brainstem slices, we found that this distinction is not exclusively true. Consistent with previous work, IPSCs in nucleus magnocellularis (NM) were slow and mediated by GABAAreceptors. However, IPSCs in nucleus laminaris (NL) and a subset of neurons in nucleus angularis (NA) had rapid time courses twofold to threefold faster than those in NM. Furthermore, we found that IPSCs in NA were mediated by both glycine and GABAAreceptors, demonstrating for the first time a role for fast glycinergic transmission in the avian auditory brainstem. Although NM, NL, and NA have unique roles in auditory processing, the majority of inhibitory input to each nucleus arises from the same source, ipsilateral superior olivary nucleus (SON). Our results demonstrate remarkable diversity of inhibitory transmission among the avian brainstem nuclei and suggest that differential glycine and GABAAreceptor activity tailors inhibition to the specific functional roles of NM, NL, and NA despite common SON input. We additionally observed that glycinergic/GABAergic activity in NA was usually depolarizing and could elicit spiking activity in NA neurons. Because NA projects to SON, these excitatory effects may influence the recruitment of inhibitory activity in the brainstem nuclei.
Fluoxetine (Prozac) Binding to Serotonin Transporter Is Modulated by Chloride and Conformational Changes
Authors: Tavoulari Sotiria , Forrest Lucy R. , Rudnick Gary
Published: July 2009

Serotonin transporter (SERT) is the main target for widely used antidepressant agents. Several of these drugs, including imipramine, citalopram, sertraline, and fluoxetine (Prozac), bound more avidly to SERT in the presence of Cl−. In contrast, Cl−did not enhance cocaine or paroxetine binding. A Cl−binding site recently identified in SERT, and shown to be important for Cl−dependent transport, was also critical for the Cl−dependence of antidepressant affinity. Mutation of the residues contributing to this site eliminated the Cl−-mediated affinity increase for imipramine and fluoxetine. Analysis of ligand docking to a single state of SERT indicated only small differences in the energy of interaction between bound ligands and Cl−. These differences in interaction energy cannot account for the affinity differences observed for Cl−dependence. However, fluoxetine binding led to a conformational change, detected by cysteine accessibility experiments, that was qualitatively different from that induced by cocaine or other ligands. Given the known Cl−requirement for serotonin-induced conformational changes, we propose that Cl−binding facilitates conformational changes required for optimal binding of fluoxetine and other antidepressant drugs.
A Microsaccadic Rhythm Modulates Gamma-Band Synchronization and Behavior
Authors: Bosman Conrado A. , Womelsdorf Thilo , Desimone Robert , Fries Pascal
Published: July 2009

Rhythms occur both in neuronal activity and in behavior. Behavioral rhythms abound at frequencies at or below 10 Hz. Neuronal rhythms cover a very wide frequency range, and the phase of neuronal low-frequency rhythms often rhythmically modulates the strength of higher-frequency rhythms, particularly of gamma-band synchronization (GBS). Here, we study stimulus-induced GBS in awake monkey areas V1 and V4 in relation to a specific form of spontaneous behavior, namely microsaccades (MSs), small fixational eye movements. We found that MSs occur rhythmically at a frequency of ∼3.3 Hz. The rhythmic MSs were predicted by the phase of the 3.3 Hz rhythm in V1 and V4 local field potentials. In turn, the MSs modulated both visually induced GBS and the speed of visually triggered behavioral responses. Fast/slow responses were preceded by a specific temporal pattern of MSs. These MS patterns induced perturbations in GBS that in turn explained variability in behavioral response speed. We hypothesize that the 3.3 Hz rhythm structures the sampling and exploration of the environment through building and breaking neuronal ensembles synchronized in the gamma-frequency band to process sensory stimuli.
Temporal-Pattern Recognition by Single Neurons in a Sensory Pathway Devoted to Social Communication Behavior
Authors: Carlson Bruce A.
Published: July 2009

Sensory systems often encode stimulus information into the temporal pattern of action potential activity. However, little is known about how the information contained within these patterns is extracted by postsynaptic neurons. Similar to temporal coding by sensory neurons, social information in mormyrid fish is encoded into the temporal patterning of an electric organ discharge. In the current study, sensitivity to temporal patterns of electrosensory stimuli was found to arise within the midbrain posterior exterolateral nucleus (ELp). Whole-cell patch recordings from ELp neuronsin vivorevealed three patterns of interpulse interval (IPI) tuning: low-pass neurons tuned to long intervals, high-pass neurons tuned to short intervals, and bandpass neurons tuned to intermediate intervals. Many neurons within each class also responded preferentially to either increasing or decreasing IPIs. Playback of electric signaling patterns recorded from freely behaving fish revealed that the IPI and direction tuning of ELp neurons resulted in selective responses to particular social communication displays characterized by distinct IPI patterns. The postsynaptic potential responses of many neurons indicated a combination of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic input, and the IPI tuning of ELp neurons was directly related to rate-dependent changes in the direction and amplitude of postsynaptic potentials. These results suggest that differences in the dynamics of short-term synaptic plasticity in excitatory and inhibitory pathways may tune central sensory neurons to particular temporal patterns of presynaptic activity. This may represent a general mechanism for the processing of behaviorally relevant stimulus information encoded into temporal patterns of activity by sensory neurons.
Cyclin D2 Is Critical for Intermediate Progenitor Cell Proliferation in the Embryonic Cortex
Authors: Glickstein Sara B. , Monaghan Julie A. , Koeller Hajira B. , Jones Tiffanie K. , Ross M. Elizabeth
Published: July 2009

Expression of cyclins D1 (cD1) and D2 (cD2) in ventricular zone and subventricular zone (SVZ), respectively, suggests that a switch to cD2 could be a requisite step in the generation of cortical intermediate progenitor cells (IPCs). However, direct evidence is lacking. Here, cD1 or cD2 was seen to colabel subsets of Pax6-expressing radial glial cells (RGCs), whereas only cD2 colabeled with Tbr2. Loss of IPCs incD2−/−embryonic cortex and analysis of expression patterns in mutant embryos lacking cD2 or Tbr2 indicate that cD2 is used as progenitors transition from RGCs to IPCs and is important for the expansion of the IPC pool. This was further supported by the laminar thinning, microcephaly, and selective reduction in the cortical SVZ population in thecD2−/−cortex. Cell cycle dynamics between embryonic day 14–16 in knock-out lines showed preserved parameters in cD1 mutants that induced cD2 expression, but absence of cD2 was not compensated by cD1. Loss of cD2 was associated with reduced proliferation and enhanced cell cycle exit in embryonic cortical progenitors, indicating a crucial role of cD2 for the support of cortical IPC divisions. In addition, knock-out of cD2, but not cD1, affected both G1-phase and also S-phase duration, implicating the importance of these phases for division cycles that expand the progenitor pool. That cD2 was the predominant D-cyclin expressed in the human SVZ at 19–20 weeks gestation indicated the evolutionary importance of cD2 in larger mammals for whom expansive intermediate progenitor divisions are thought to enable generation of larger, convoluted, cerebral cortices.
The olfactory system of the tammar wallaby is developed at birth and directs the neonate to its mother's pouch odours
Authors: Schneider Nanette Y , Fletcher Terrence P , Shaw Geoff , Renfree Marilyn B
Published: July 2009

In kangaroos and wallabies at birth the highly altricial newborn young climbs unassisted from the urogenital opening to the teat. Negative geotropism is important for the initial climb to the pouch opening, but nothing is known of the signals that then direct the neonate downwards to the teat. Here we show that the newborn tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) has the olfactory apparatus to detect smell. Both the main olfactory system and vomeronasal organ (VNO) are developed at the time of birth. Receptor cells of the main olfactory epithelium immunopositive for Goα-protein project to the three layered main olfactory bulb (MOB). The receptor epithelium of the VNO contains G-protein immunopositive cells and has olfactory knob-like structures. The VNO is connected to an area between the two MOBs. Next, using a functional test, we show that neonates can respond to odours from their mother's pouch. When neonatal young are presented with a choice of a pouch-odour-soaked swab or a saline swab, they choose the swab with their mother's pouch secretions significantly more often (P<0.05) than the saline swab. We conclude that both olfactory systems are capable of receiving odour signals at birth, a function that must be a critical adaptation for the survival of an altricial marsupial neonate such as the tammar for its journey to the pouch.
Sókratés és a (jó) lelkiismeret
Authors: Mogyoródi Emese
Published: July 2009

Sókratés modern kori értelmezéseinek legelterjedtebb közhelyét Leo Strauss egy megjegyzése világíthatná meg a legjobban, aki „a lelkiismeret legnagyobb szentjeként” aposztrofálja. Hegeltől Nietzschén át Hannah Arendtig és tovább Sókratést a modernitás úgy fogja fel, mint aki erkölcsi és vallási meggyőződéseivel erőteljesen szembehelyezkedett a hagyományos görög valláserkölcsökkel, olyannyira, hogy a görögök „kompetitív” erényfelfogása felől tekintve valójában joggal ítélték el azzal, hogy „nem hisz a város isteneiben”, azaz a görög vallás pantheonjában, és olyan értékeket propagál, amelyek aláássák a hagyományos valláserkölcsöt. Ez a tanulmány arra vállalkozik, hogy felvázolja, mennyiben és pontosan milyen értelemben tekinthető Sókratés az erkölcsi lelkiismeret szószólójának, s hogy erkölcsisége mennyiben tér el valójában az őt megelőző valláserkölcsöktől. A szerző a tanulmány első részében részletesen megvizsgálja azokat a szövegeket, amelyekre azt az értelmezést alapozzák a modern szerzők, hogy Sókratés daimonionja a lelkiismeret előképe vagy szimbóluma, megvizsgálja az értelmezés mögötti előfeltevéseket, majd amellett érvel, hogy a daimóni jelzés vagy hang nem a lelkiismereté, sokkal inkább az isteni gondviselés felől érkező figyelmeztetés vagy óvás. A tanulmány második részében megvizsgálja, hogy ehelyett hol érhető tetten a lelkiismeret működése Sókratés történetében, és amellett érvel, hogy ez nem más, mint a platóni Védőbeszédben szereplő delphoi jóslat. Sókratés aporetikus helyzete a delphoi jóslat hallatán abból ered, hogy feltétlen imperatívuszként viszonyul az „ismerd meg tenmagad” delphoi diktumához, és éppen ez az egzisztenciális és episztemikus alázat az, ami a modern lelkiismeret fogalmával analógiában áll. Ennek az alázatnak, az isten és az ember közötti szakadék tudatának a hiánya άμαθία-t eredményez, olyan episztemikus és erkölcsi hiányosságot, melytől Sókratés, mintegy Athén élő lelkiismereteként, „vizsgálódó” tevékenységével megszabadítani kívánja szeretett városállamát.
Achilleus hajnala. Fényszimbolika az Ilias ban és Statius Achilleis ében
Authors: Kozák Dániel
Published: July 2009

A Statius
Achilleis
ében olvasható három hajnalleírás (1. 242–5; 1. 819–20; 2. 1–4) szorosan kapcsolódik Achilles „átváltozásaihoz” a műben. E részletek felidézik az
Ilias
19. énekét nyitó hajnalt, valamint azt a homérosi metafora- és szimbólumrendszert is, mely a hős harcba való visszatérését a fény, illetve a hajnal érkezéséhez hasonlítja. Különösen összetett kapcsolat fedezhető fel Achilles hőssé való visszaváltozása és a napfelkelte között a harmadik statiusi hajnalleírásban, melyet Achilles mint epikus és mint elégikus hős jövőjének lehetséges előrejelzéseként is értelmezhetünk. Az ugyanitt említett
genitor coruscae lucis
Iuppiterrel, illetve Diespiterrel azonosítható; a hajnalleírás ezáltal a főisten által az
Achilleis
ben játszott szerepet is árnyalja.
Az ókori görög-római morfológiai modell utóélete
Authors: Cser András
Published: July 2009

Ennek a dolgozatnak a tárgya a morfológia, illetve szótan ókori grammatikákban megmutatkozó felfogása, melyet kétféle összefüggésben helyezünk el: egyrészt a morfológia mai modelljeinek tipológiájában, másfelől pedig azok tudománytörténeti alakulásában. Áttekintjük, hogy milyen érvek szólnak a mai nyelvelméletben az ókori típusú, szigorú értelemben morfológia nélküli szótan mellett. Szólunk arról is, hogy hogyan bontakozott ki a morfológiai szerkezet egyre pontosabb felismerése a magyar nyelv régi, latin alapú grammatikáiban a 16–17. század folyamán.
A Charis tekintete Pindarosnál
Authors: Adorjáni Zsolt
Published: July 2009

A
charis
Pindaros költészetének s egyszersmind
ars poeticá
jának egyik központi fogalma. Jelen vizsgálat célja nem a személyes istennő vagy az elvont erő jelentésének meghatározása, sokkal inkább hatáskörének felderítése. A 14. és a 7. olympiai óda olyan metaforákkal jeleníti meg a Charist, melyek a virágzás (ΘΑΛ-), a szerelem (ΕΡΑ-) és a látás (ΙΔ-) képzetkörét idézik fel. E motívumok végigkísérik a Charisok pindarosi ábrázolását. Dolgozatom az állandó képi szemlélet változó formáit követi végig, kitér a Charisszal rokon Múzsa jellemzésére és bemutatja a tekintet motívumának központi jelentőségét.
Az egységesség problémája a Nisus és Euryalus-epizódban (Vergilius, Aeneis 9, 176–502)
Authors: Ferenczi Attila
Published: July 2009

A cikk azt a problémát vizsgálja konkrét szöveghely értelmezésével, hogyan teremthet lehetőséget gazdagító új olvasatok megfogalmazására régebbi irodalmi, esztétikai előfeltevéseink felülvizsgálata. Az
Aeneis
Nisus és Euryalus-epizódjában a szerző egy homérosi ihletésű katonai epizódban az epikus és heroikus világtól (a cikk szóhasználatában epikus kódtól) idegen elemekkel bővíti ki az elbeszélést. A szerelmi elégia nyelve és a görög fiúszerelem fogalma azonban feszültséget hoz a homérosi katonatörténetbe. Ennek eredményeképpen a részletet záró költői megszólalás és maga a történet között az interpretáció szempontjából termékeny feszültség alakul ki. A cikk amellett érvel, hogy ezt a feszültséget nem szabad eltüntetnie az inter pretációnak, helyette az egységesség követelményét érdemes újragondolni.
Domitianus Germanicus és az ún. lex Flavia municipalis
Authors: Illés Imre Áron
Published: July 2009

A mai Spanyolország területén egyre nagyobb számban előkerülő Flavius-kori municipális törvényeknek egy közös minta, az ún.
lex Flavia municipalis
szolgált alapul. A téma kutatói több mint száz éve magától értetődő axiómának tekintették, hogy ez az alaptörvény Domitianus hiányzó Germanicus győzelmi jelzője alapján keltezhető. A
lex Irnitana
felfedezését követően ezt az érvet többen kétségbe vonták, akik pedig kitartottak a régi keltezés mellett, nem cáfolják, sőt nem is említik az ellenérveket, ezenfelül a Germanicus jelző felvételének datálásában mutatkozó eltérések sem mindig tükröződnek a szűkebb szakirodalomban. Jelen dolgozat célja a hagyományos keltezés szilárd alapokra helyezése a Germanicus jelző felvételének, illetve Domitianus titulatúrájában való megjelenésének vizsgálatával és az ellenérvek alapos elemzésével.
Egy „elveszett” Jeromos-hely Szent Gellértnél
Authors: Déri Balázs
Published: July 2009

Hieronymus (Szent Jeromos) Szent Gellért csanádi püspök exegetikai munkájának, a
Deliberatió
nak (
Gerardi Moresenae aecclesiae seu Csanadiensis episcopi Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum
, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 6211, ed. Gabriel Silagi, in CCCM 29, 1978, ed. Karácsonyi Béla – Szegfű László 1999) egyik legfontosabb patrisztikus forrása. A tanulmány kimutatja, hogy a Deliberatio két szöveghelye részben szó szerinti idézet, részben parafrázis Victorinus poetoviumi (ma: ptuji) püspök Szent Jeromos által átdolgozott Apocalypsis-kommentárjából (
Commentarii in Apocalypsin editio Victorini et recensio Hieronymiuna cum posteriorum additamentis,
rec. I. Haussleiter, in CSEL 49, 1916).
A középiskolai latintanítás helyzete Magyarországon 1995 és 2008 között
Authors: Gesztesi Enikő
Published: July 2009

A szerző a hazai középiskolai latintanítás helyzetét mutatja be az 1995 és 2008 közötti évekre vonatkozóan. A statisztikai adatok is visszaesést mutatnak az oktatás minden terén: csökken a latintanárok, a latin nyelvet tanuló diákok és az érettségizők száma, s jól látható visszaesés figyelhető meg a versenyekre történő jelentkezésben is. A dolgozat elemzi a humán műveltségi tárgyak tanítását és a tanítás során használt tankönyveket, továbbá megállapítja, hogy az egyetemek közül csak a bölcsészkarok fogadják el e klasszikus nyelvet érettségi pontot adó tárgyként. A tanulmány konklúziója, hogy a latin szerepe csökken az iskolákban, s e tendencia megállítása érdekében széles szakmai összefogásra lenne szükség.
The development of European Union common research and development policy and programs with special regard to life sciences
Authors: Pörzse Gábor
Published: July 2009

A kutatás-fejlesztés (K+F) az európai integráció kezdeteitől fogva kiemelt szerepet játszott a közösség életében; jelentősége az utóbbi néhány évben – a lisszaboni stratégia meghirdetését követően – fokozódott. A közösségi kutatásokban mindig is meghatározó részük volt a keretprogramoknak, amelyeket azzal a céllal hoztak létre, hogy összehangolják a nemzeti K+F-tevékenységeket, illetve hatékony módon válasszák szét a közösségi szintű és a nemzeti keretek között megvalósítható feladatokat. A közösség már igen korán felismerte az élettudományok jelentőségét, így nem véletlen, hogy azok a második legnagyobb finanszírozású prioritássá váltak az utolsó két keretprogramban. Jelen tanulmány történeti és egyben elemző, értékelő áttekintést ad a közösségi K+F-politika, -tevékenység fejlődéséről a kezdetektől napjainkig. Részletesen megvizsgálja, hogy a keretprogramok szerkezetének, feltételrendszerének, szabályainak és prioritásainak változása hogyan követte a közösségi kutatásokkal szemben támasztott társadalmi, gazdasági igények alakulását. Nagy hangsúlyt fektet az élettudományi kutatások fejlődésének elemzésére, annak bemutatására, hogy ezek mennyiben feleltek meg a kor kihívásainak, hogyan épültek be a keretprogramok rendszerébe. A tanulmány további kutatási területe annak vizsgálata, hogy a magyar kutatók milyen eredményesen tudtak bekapcsolódni a közösségi kutatásokba, kiemelten a keretprogramok élettudományi területén. E kérdés megválaszolásához elengedhetetlen volt az európai nyilvános és zárt adatbázisokban rendelkezésre álló adatállomány áttekintése, feldolgozása és elemzése. A korábbi, hasonló tárgyú munkákkal szemben, a mostani elemzés nem a politikai vagy a tudományos háttérre koncentrál, hanem a közösségi kutatásoknak a fenntartható társadalmi, gazdasági fejlődésben, a versenyképességben, a közös politikák támogatásában játszott szerepére, az integráció elmélyülésének folyamatára; emellett az 50-es évektől kezdve napjainkig teljes körű áttekintést ad e területről, ismertetve a legújabb kezdeményezéseket és a jövőbeni elképzeléseket. Újszerű a tanulmány a feldolgozott témakör – az élettudományok fejlődésének, a keretprogramban elfoglalt helyének vizsgálata – tekintetében, továbbá a magyar részvétel adatainak feldolgozása és elemzése vonatkozásában is az 5. és 6. keretprogram élettudományi kutatásai területén.
Grayish discoloration of the face – argyria
Authors: Tóth Veronika , Marschalkó Márta , Hársing Judit , Kárpáti Sarolta
Published: July 2009

Az argyria ezüstvegyületek tartós lokális vagy szisztémás alkalmazása nyomán kialakuló kórkép. A tünetek leggyakrabban a bőrön, körmökön, conjunctiván, szájnyálkahártyán jelentkeznek, kezelésük mind a mai napig kihívást jelent. Bár napjainkban ezüsttartalmú gyógyszerek, gyógyászati eszközök használatára mérsékelt gyakorisággal kerül sor, az argyria előfordulásával mégis számolnunk kell. A kórkép leggyakoribb okává mára a paramedicinális gyógyászatban széles körben alkalmazott ezüstkolloid tartós fogyasztása vált. Közleményünkben 54 éves férfi beteg esetét ismertetjük, aki évek óta vegetáriánus életmódot folytatott. A beteg immunrendszere erősítése céljából fogyasztott ezüstkolloidot közel két éven át, amelynek hatására kialakult az arc diffúz, szürke elszíneződése. Az anamnézis és a klinikai kép alapján az argyria diagnózisa merült fel. A beteg kivizsgálása során laboratóriumi és képalkotó diagnosztikus vizsgálatokkal belső szervi eltérést nem találtunk. Az argyria diagnózisát a tünetes bőrből végzett hisztológiai vizsgálat alátámasztotta. A szerzők az irodalmi adatok tükrében felhívják a figyelmet a paramedicinában az ezüstkolloid napjainkban tapasztalt térhódítására, mellékhatásaira, a szerrel kapcsolatos téves információkra, az ezüstkolloid-fogyasztás veszélyeire.