The Augment in the Fragments of the Epic Cycle and Other Fragmentary Greek Epic

I discuss the use of the augment in fragmentary hexametric Greek texts outside of early epic Greek (Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymns) and the mock-epic works (such as the Batrakhomyomakhia). I quote them after West 2003 but also analyze fragments that are not found in West. I determine the metrically secure forms, discuss previous scholarship on the meaning of the augment in epic Greek, and then proceed to the actual analysis. For my investigation, I divide the fragments in three categories: first, those that can be analyzed; second, those that have fewer forms and that allow for an analysis but require more caution than those of the first category; and third, the ones that have no or not enough metrically secure forms but are still intellegible. The starting point for my investigation is that the augment had near-deictic/visual-evidential meaning and that it was used in focused and highlighted passages as well as to emphasize new information. This is confirmed by the fragments, but as was the case in the larger epic corpus, there are exceptions to the rules in the Cycle as well.

Le mal subi, le mal rendu. Une lecture anthropologique des pratiques de lamentations et de malédictions dans le shiʿisme populaire iranien

Résumé Dans le shiʿisme duodécimain iranien, deux catégories de traditions populaires (comprenant rituels, pratiques et croyances) ont pris forme au cours du temps autour de la question du mal, précisément des souffrances et de la mort subies par les personnes de la famille du Prophète (ahl al-bayt). La première catégorie comprend les expressions poétiques élégiaques (marṯīya) accompagnées de pratiques reflétant la passion et la compassion pour les victimes de la mort injuste, à commencer par le troisième imam Ḥusayn. La seconde catégorie comprend de violentes expressions satiriques de malédiction adressées aux auteurs de ce mal. Cette tradition mobilise aussi la récitation de prières et de formules dévotionnelles tirées du corpus scripturaire sacré, ainsi qu’un ensemble de pratiques particulières appelées ʿUmar-košī (« le meurtre de ʿUmar »). Cet article propose d’analyser la formation et la fonction de ces deux traditions, ainsi que l’évolution de leur forme et de leur signification dans le contexte social du shiʿisme iranien contemporain. Il montrera que ces deux traditions, tout en étant cohérentes avec le double principe shiʿite de tawallāʾ (loyauté et amour pour les imams) et tabarrāʾ (dissociation et haine à l’égard de leurs adversaires), reflètent clairement l’autonomie des croyants vis-à-vis du pouvoir politique comme de l’autorité religieuse institutionnelle. In Iranian Twelver Shiʿism, two categories of popular traditions (including rituals, practices and beliefs) have taken shape over time around the issue of evil, namely the harm and death suffered by the holy figures of the house of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt). The first category includes elegiac poetic expressions (marṯīya), accompanied by ritual practices reflecting passion and compassion for the victims of unjust death – notably the third imam, Ḥusayn. The second category includes violent and satirical expressions of maledictions, addressed to the authors of this evil. This tradition also involves the recitation of prayers and devotional formulas borrowed from the sacred scriptural corpus as well as particular practices called ʿUmar-košī (the murder of ʿUmar). This article offers an analysis of the formation and function of these two traditions, as well as the development of their form and meaning in the social context of contemporary Iranian Shiʿism. It shows that, by being in line with the double Shiʿi principle of tawallāʾ (loyalty and love towards the Imams) and tabarrāʾ (dissociation and hatred towards the enemies of the Imams), these two traditions clearly reflect the autonomy of the believers vis-à-vis both political power and institutional religious authority.

The sociological MRI of a fetish. How ‘odd’ is an oddity and how ‘peculiar’ peculiarity?

We have used the term 'fetish' in a broader sense and especially related to the functions that a 'fetish' has in society. We are talking either about the tags that any 'fetish' receives [as undesirable, unwanted, forbidden, and peculiar], or about the uncertainty of its social approval, about the coagulating role it plays on individuals with the same repulsive vision/orientation that were previously unidentifiable, or many other aspects under which a so-called fetish works socially. The object or action in question passes from individual preference to the group emblem and then determines its actions and ideas, internally as well as in social exchanges with other groups. This is done in a fetishistic way with everything that is 'new' emerging in society, either previously non-existent, or competitive with something already standardized, or - as in the case of many fetishes - forbidden and socially stigmatized. If the first category does not meet a social resistance and does not end up turning into a fetish, for the group and the society, the other two have all the advantages to do so. The odd - competitive and forbidden alternatives - becomes the fetish for the group that adopts it as its emblem because it later regulates all its actions, as well as for the Society, because it keeps around the group and its actions the atmosphere in the sphere of fetishism - equivocal, promiscuous, and detestable. But precisely these very fetishistic attributes are the same ones that determine society to fight against the group and its 'fetish', new and peculiar, that also help disparate individuals to identify with that fetus, to coagulate as a group borrowing precisely this infamous, shameless identity. Therefore, the question we try to find answers here is but legitimate: since and until when oddity is ‘odd’?

Technological solutions for drilling a trap intrusion section on the Srednebotuobinskoe oil gas condensate field, East Siberia

One of the largest trap intrusion provinces, Siberian traps, is located in the East-Siberian Platform in Russia. A trap intrusion zone usually has abnormally low reservoir pressures and natural fractures. Consequently, trap drilling is associated with fluid losses that can be catastrophic. The section of trap intrusion is a part of a Ø 174 mm production casing section of the Srednebotuobinskoe field. The basic well design of this section also includes the Osinsky horizon, which features an abnormally high reservoir pressure zone. The latter creates incompatible with drilling conditions environment due to the presence of catastrophic loss zones in traps. Time spent on drilling a trap intrusion zone accounts for up to 30 % of the total well drilling time. The abovementioned geological issues in directional wells become the key topic in solving it. The method to resolve this issue is an integrated approach employing all the technologies and technical facilities aimed at finding a technological solution. First of all, in order to optimize the well construction cycles and reduce the complications, all the wells were classified in three categories as per the type of behavior in trap intrusion. This allowed to work out multi-level activities, that depended on severity of losses and non-operational time spent on drilling through this section. An alternative well design was developed and trialed on several wells, which showed positive results on decreasing non-productive timing. The main concept of this design was significantly different from the basic well design that was used in the past on the Srednebotuobinskoe field. The main difference was isolation of traps from the high pressure Osinsky horizon lower section with a Ø 245 mm casing string, which allowed safe splitting of two incompatible drilling zones. The economic effect of this solution allowed saving of up to 10.4 days or 15 % of the construction time in the wells of first category. These results were reviewed at the Technical Committee of the Company and agreed to implement the alternative well design on first category wells on the Srednebotuobinskoe field. In addition, for the rest of well categories the Drilling Team has produced and successfully implemented the preventative measures that allowed drilling through traps with lost circulation material. It is worth to mention that this method assumed a by-passing mud-cleaning system on the rig to allow building up a solid phase thus stemming the losses while drilling. For all the categories of the wells the Drilling team has selected and trialed different types and designs of drilling bits that would allow drilling hard rock such as dolerite section in traps with minimal number of runs. For the last five years the Drilling team together with the bit producing companies have designed a new type of PDC cutters that would allow to enhance durability as well as improve drilling speed both in dolerite formations and in overlying formations in the Production casing section. The Drilling team has also managed to reduce the number of trips associated with early bit wear decreasing them from five to two runs and create an experimental basis for drilling the entire section of the production casing in one run. From 2019 team continue looking for further solutions that would allow to improve bottomhole assembly elements balancing between durability and drilling rate in different types of formations above and below traps. A range of proposed technological solutions significantly reduced the impact on the well construction performance by preventing and reducing the downhole losses events in the section of trap intrusion on the Srednebotuobinskoe field.

On the bottomless lake of firstness: conjectures on the synthetic power of consciousness

This essay focuses on the concept of consciousness in C. S. Peirce’s work, revealing how its ways of being are associated with the three Peircean phenomenological categories. In this article, I intend to reflect on the heuristic power of the mind, namely, its ability to bring about new ideas, which, within Peirce’s logic of inquiry, is called by the well-known term of abduction. The abductive logical step promotes a synthesis of signs that constitutes a logical structure capable of proposing a new mediation or representation of a new phenomenon. I make use of a metaphorical passage from Peirce (CP 7.547, undated) not only to give the title to this essay, but also to highlight the importance of the first category as a sort of synechistic envelopment of an unprecedented logical structure of signs that composes a new synthesis. Two continua intertwine themselves, namely, those of the first and third categories, to account for what appears as a fact of the world in the theater of secondness. The essay also seeks to bring to light the core realism of Peirce’s philosophy, the genetic aspect of this bottomless lake, through its cosmology, where the generalization of forms and the acquisition of habits of reality are the proper ground of his Objective Idealism. One of the heuristic aspect of the lake metaphor is a sort of invitation to extend the concept of synthesis from the realm of logical structures to that one of arts, which in this essay will remain as a suggestion for a further reflection.

Dissolution of expressive and instrumental voluntary associations: Four key dimensions in explaining organizational change

This study inspects the reasons as for why voluntary associations end their activity and dissolve as legal entities. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with former leaders of 30 organizations in Estonia and Finland. To appreciate the sector’s diversity, the analysis makes a distinction between associations with mainly expressive, and those with mainly instrumental functions. Causes for the associations’ dissolution fall into four different categories related to (1) the association as a social entity, (2) resources, (3) goals and (4) environment. Reasons belonging to the first category of internal, social reasons, such as problems of leadership, internal organization and membership recruitment were the most common ones. However, several reasons often intertwined. A comparison between associations of different types showed that expressive associations were most often threatened by causes in the first category, while they were surprisingly immune to the other ones. Instrumental associations are dependent on other actors and external circumstances, and the reasons for their dissolution are likely to be related to problems with resource acquisition, goals or environments.

Neurocognition Function of Patients With Bipolar Depression, Unipolar Depression, and Depression With Bipolarity

Much evidence shows that some Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5)-defined unipolar depression (UD) with bipolarity manifests bipolar diathesis. Little is known about the cognitive profiles of patients with depression with bipolarity (DWB). The study aimed to investigate the differences in cognitive profiles among patients with bipolar depression (BD), major depressive disorder (namely, UD), and DWB. Drug-naïve patients with BD, UD, and DWB and healthy controls (HC) were recruited (30 cases in each group). Cognitive function was evaluated by THINC-it (THINC-intelligent tool), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and continuous performance test (CPT). For THINC-it, no significant differences of the Z-scores in both objective and subjective factors were found between the DWB group and BD group, but the Z-scores in the BD group were significantly lower than those in the UD group. For WCST, significant differences were found between the BD group and DWB group in the number of responses, categories completed, trails to completed first category, perseverative responses, and perseverative errors. All the indices of WCST in the DWB group were significantly worse than those in the UD group except for trails to completed first category and total number of response correct. For CPT, only scores of leakage responses and false responses in the four-digit number in the BD group and DWB group were significantly higher than those in the UD group; no significant difference was found between the BD group and DWB group. The results indicated that patients with DWB might perform differently from those with UD but similarly to those with BD with cognition impairment.

Influencia de la lateralidad y el lado de juego de los jugadores de pádel de alto nivel en parámetros técnico-tácticos (Influence of hand-dominance and the game side on technique and tactical parameters in high-level padel)

El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar la influencia de la lateralidad y el lado de juego de los jugadores en la distribución, dirección y eficacia de los golpeos en pádel de alto nivel. La muestra incluyó 8680 golpeos correspondientes a 1055 puntos de 9 partidos de primera categoría nacional. Los partidos fueron analizados a través de observación sistemática. Los resultados de este estudio mostraron que los jugadores diestros realizan significativamente más golpes ganadores y con trayectorias cruzadas que los zurdos, que juegan más golpes paralelos (p < .05). Además, los jugadores del lado derecho juegan más golpes paralelos, mientras que los jugadores del lado izquierdo juegan más cruzados y realizan más golpes ganadores (p < .05). Finalmente, se observaron cambios en los comportamientos tácticos de los jugadores cuando los jugadores de la pareja son diestros y cuando un jugador de la pareja es zurdo. De acuerdo con estos resultados, la lateralidad de los jugadores en el partido tiene un importante papel en el estilo y la eficacia del juego en pádel. Estas diferencias deben ser tomadas en cuenta en el diseño de entrenamientos en pádel adaptados a las demandas de la competición. === The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of players’ hand dominance and game side on strokes’ distribution, direction and effectiveness in high-level padel. The sample included 8680 strokes corresponding to 1055 points from 9 national first category matches. Matches were analyzed through systematic observation. The results of this study showed that right-handed players made significantly more winners and cross-court strokes than left-handed players (p < .05). In addition, right-hand players play more down the line shots, while the left-side players play more cross court and winner shots (p < .05). Finally, changes in players’ tactical behaviors were observed depending player’s hand dominance (right-handed or left-handed) in the match. According to these findings, the hand dominance has an important role in players’ game style and effectiveness. These differences should be taken into account for designing optimal training programs in padel.

The Decline of Religious Life in the Twentieth Century

The decline in numbers of religious in the West is discussed in numerous studies. While there is a consensus about the statistical reality of decreasing numbers, scholars disagree about the alleged reasons for this decline. This article maps the field and presents a survey of four categories of answers to the question of why religious life declined during the twentieth century. A distinction is made between theories that ascribe the decline to (1) historical, (2) societal, (3) ecclesial, and (4) theological reasons. The first category views the decline as part of a historical-cyclical pattern of growth and decline. The second encompasses explanations that focus on secularization, professionalization, or new societal opportunities for women. Thirdly, post-conciliar church-organizational reasons will be discussed. Finally, pre-conciliar theology is investigated as a potential reason for the decline. While none of the reasons discussed here can be excluded from at least contributing to the decline, we demonstrate that some authors are mistaken in their conclusions due to misinterpreting data in a way that obscures the possibility of an emerging decline before the statistics peak in 1965 (which marks the end of the Council). We also demonstrate how theology has been an underestimated but significant influence on the statistics of religious life.

13. Defences to intentional torts against the person or property

This chapter examines the types of defence that can be used to counter claims for intentional torts against property or person (although they might be applicable to other torts as well). It explains that defences to these torts can be placed within a threefold system. The first category consists of absent element defences (a successful plea means that the tort has not been committed), the second comprises justification defences (meaning that there was reason to commit the tort), and the third contains public policy defences (which means that the interests of the state intrude so as to deprive the claimant of an action).