Contrast

A versatile method for positive-type patterning of polyimide (PI) based on a two-layer photosensitive poly(benzoxazole) (PSPBO) and poly(amic acid) (PAA) film has been developed to provide a promising material in the field of microelectronics. This patterning system consisted of a pristine PAA thick bottom-layer and a poly(o-hydroxy amide) (PHA) thin top layer with 9,9-bis[4-(tert-butoxycarbonyl-methyloxy)phenyl]fluorene (TBMPF) as a dissolution inhibitor, and (5-propylsulfonyloxyimino-5H-thiophene-2-ylidene)-(2-methylphenyl)-acetonitrile (PTMA) as a photoacid generator (PAG). The PHA and PAA were prepared from 4,4 0-(hexafluoroisopropylidene)-bis(o-aminophenol) and 4,4 0-oxybis(benzoic acid) derivatives, and 3,3 0 ,4,4 0-biphenyltetracarboxylic dianhydride and 4,4 0-oxydianiline, respectively, in N,N-dimethylacetamide. This two-layer system based on PHA (150-nm thickness) and PAA (1.5-lm thickness) showed high sensitivity of 35 mJ/cm 2 and high contrast of 10.3 when exposed to a 365 nm line (i-line), post-baked at 100°C for 2 min, and developed in a 2.38 wt.% tetramethylammonium hydroxide aqueous solution/5 wt.% isopropanol at 25°C. A clear positive image of a 4-lm line-and-space pattern was printed on a film which was exposed to 100 mJ/cm 2 of i-line by a contact-printing mode and fully converted to the corresponding PBO/PI pattern upon heating at 350°C, confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy. This two-layer system could be applied to the patterning of various PAAs.

Figurations de la nature ambivalente dans l'oeuvre d'Albert Camus Images-principes du décor de l'existence Je suis né pauvre, sous un ciel heureux, dans une nature avec laquelle on se sent un accord, non une hostilité. Je n'ai donc pas commencé par le déchirement, mais par la plénitude. 1

Veiling glare and ambient light reflection can significantly degrade the quality of an image on a display device. Veiling glare is primarily associated with the diffuse spread of image signal caused by multiple light scattering in the emissive structure of the device. The glare ratio associated with a test image with a 1-cmdiameter black spot is reported as 555 for film, 89 for a monochrome monitor, and 25 for a color monitor. Diffuse light reflection results from ambient light entering the display surface and returning at random emission angles. The diffuse reflection coefficient (luminance/illuminance, 1/sr) is reported as 0.026 for film, 0.058 for a monochrome monitor, and 0.025 for a color monitor with an antireflective surface coating. Both processes increase the luminance in black regions and cause contrast reduction. Specular reflections interfere with detail in the displayed scene. The specular reflection coefficient (luminance/luminance) is reported as 0.011 for film, 0.041 for a monochrome monitor, and 0.021 for a color monitor with an antireflective coating.

Objective: To compare the efficacy of hysterosalpingo-contrast sonography (HyCoSy) using a saline solution with that of radiographic hysterosalpingography (HSG) in the assessment of tubal patency. Method: We compared the findings obtained by the 2 methods with those obtained by standard diagnostic laparoscopy with the chromopertubation test in a study with 88 infertile women younger than 40 years. Results: The sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy of HyCoSy and HSG were similar, and 65 (74%) of the women reported the pain associated with HyCoSy as mild to moderate. Conclusion: The HyCoSy procedure is well tolerated and can be used as a primary tool for the evaluation of tubal patency in infertile women.

We analyze the polarization changes introduced by a rotated Dove prism on the linearly polarized light, using the Jones calculus and the exact ray trace analysis. The state of polarization changes from the linear to a mildly elliptical one when a plane wave front passes through a rotated Dove prism: its semi-major axis is nearly parallel to the input plane of polarization, for any angle of prism rotation. The interferogram contrast remains high for all shearing angles in spite of polarization changes when the Dove prism is incorporated into a rotational shearing interferometer. These results are confirmed experimentally.

The supposed benefits of global sourcing in supply chain management remain subject to debate. Here this study investigates the potential benefits of global sourcing using a large dataset obtained from a leading European automotive original equipment manufacturer, spanning a period of five years. Contrary to expectations, this study found no evidence that low-wage country sourcing leads to cost reductions relative to sourcing from suppliers based in industrialized countries. However, the data does show that global sourcing induces increased competition within the industrialized country supply base when low-wage country suppliers participate in negotiations. Additionally, a new method for assessing competitive dynamics in supply markets is introduced.

The present research extends previous functional accounts of counterfactual thinking by incorporating the notion of reflective and evaluative processing. Participants generated counterfactuals about their anagram performance, after which their persistence and performance on a second set of anagrams was measured. Evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did reflective processing of upward counterfactuals, whereas reflective processing of downward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did evaluative processing of downward counterfactuals. Moreover, path analyses indicated that whereas the relationship between counterfactual thinking and persistence was accounted for by emotional responses following upward and downward counterfactual generation, the relationship between counterfactual thinking and performance was accounted for by enhanced persistence following reflective processing of downward counterfactuals, but was accounted for by both enhanced persistence and strategic thinking following evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals.

The study explores the grammatical means employed for the expression of information structure in standard colloquial Burmese on the basis of a corpus of written and spoken texts. It analyses the morphosyntactic and prosodic devices identified as relevant for its goals, namely the differential subject and object marking, constituent order, particles used to create a range of interpretations related to the notions of topic, focus and contrast, stand-alone sentence nominalisations and prosody.
The study argues for the existence of a grammatical system of informational PACKAGING in Burmese that has no direct linking to information structural categories like topic, focus and contrast. Expressed by various morphosyntactic means, it segregates information into separate informational units (PACKAGES) and establishes structural relations between them. This partition shows a robust correspondence to prosody.
The PACKAGING system is mobilised for creation of diverse information structure-related interpretive effects through its different configurations and interaction with the context. Concepts like topic, focus, contrast and apparent contrast-degrees observed in Burmese are interpretive outcomes of this interaction and have no immediate expression in the language. Furthermore, the usage of PACKAGING is not restricted to information structural effects and the system plays a crucial role in discourse structuring and content management in Burmese.
Analysis of stand-alone nominalised sentences along the lines of a speaker’s subjective channel of communication suggests the resemblance with the function of similar phenomena in many other Tibeto-Burman languages. It proposes PACKAGING motivations for this function and shows how this can be mobilised for information structure-related interpretations.
Hence, the study rejects the view of a direct expression of information structural categories by linguistic means. Instead, similarly to many other linguistic categories, it proposes an indirect interpretive link between a pragmatically-semantically underspecified grammatical system and the derived interpretation.

To determine whether pupil size is correlated with visual acuity and contrast sensitivity at all distances in eyes with an apodized diffractive intraocular lens (IOL).Private Clinic, Oviedo, Spain.Six months after surgery, the best corrected distance visual acuity, best distance-corrected near visual acuity, intermediate visual acuity, and distance contrast sensitivity under photopic (85 cd/m2) and mesopic (5 cd/m2) conditions were measured in 670 eyes of 335 consecutive patients who had implantation of the AcrySof ReSTOR Natural IOL (SN60D3, Alcon). Pupil diameters in distance vision were measured using a pupillometer.The logMAR best corrected distance acuity was significantly better with larger pupils (r = 0.297; P = 1.36 × 10−8), whereas logMAR best distance-corrected near acuity was significantly worse with larger pupils (r = 0.276, P = 1.02 × 10−7). For all pupil diameters, intermediate visual acuity worsened significantly as the distance of the test increased (P<.01). Statistically significant differences in photopic and mesopic contrast sensitivity at all spatial frequencies were found between the small-pupil and large-pupil groups (P<.01). Distance photopic contrast sensitivity and mesopic contrast sensitivity were better in patients with large pupils than in patients with small pupils.A larger pupil was correlated significantly with better distance visual acuity and with worse near visual acuity. For all pupil diameters, intermediate visual acuity worsened significantly as the distance of the test increased. Distance contrast sensitivity was better with larger pupils at all spatial frequencies in bright-light and dim-light conditions.

An evaluation of hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) for EUV lithography is presented. The effects of bake temperature and developer concentration on the ultimate resolution, sensitivity and contrast are investigated. It is demonstrated that HSQ as a negative-tone photoresist provides patterns with half-pitches as small as 20 nm with EUV interference lithography. SEM micrographs show that the low line-edge roughness of the patterns is accompanied with the high-quality cross-sectional profiles. This high resolution and pattern quality are achieved through development in high-concentration developers for long development times, which is in line with previous results obtained with e-beam lithography.

Bu çalışmanın amacı, tarihi yapıları yeniden işlevlendirme doğrultusunda uygulanan ve farklı yöntemler üzerinden ortaya çıkan mimari kontrastın estetik ve işlevsel açıdan incelenmesidir. Kent hafızasında nirengi noktası oluşturan kimi kamusal mekânlar; yangın, deprem, savaş veya başka sebeplerden dolayı kullanılamaz ya da günümüz şartlarında fonksiyon açısından yetersiz hale gelmiştir. Bu çalışmada eski yapıları yeniden canlandırmak üzere kullanılan yeniden işlevlendirme, yenileme, eklemlenme ve kısmi koruma olarak tanımlanan dört farklı renovasyon yöntemi; tanımları yapılarak Türkiye ve dünyadan örnekler üzerinden incelenerek değerlendirilmiştir.

Modern çağın gerektirdiği popüler mimari unsurları tarihi yapılarla bir araya getiren bu yaklaşımlar; kent ve toplum hafızasında yeni imgeler oluşturmakta zorlanırken aynı zamanda oldukça eleştirilmektedirler. Dönüşüm projeleri kentsel silueti bozmamalı ama aynı zamanda çağdaş mimarlık unsurlarına uygun olmalıdır. Bu anlamda “bağlam”, içinde bulunulan mimarlık kültürünü ve coğrafyayı oldukça iyi anlamaya ve araştırmaya yönelik bir biçimde ele alınmalıdır. Çevredeki yapılar tarafından benimsenerek kentin doğal atmosferini bozmaması gereken “yenilenen / dönüştürülen tarihi yapı”  eğer cephede yarattığı zıtlık varsa uyumsuzluk içinde uyumu yakalamalı ve karşıtlığın biçimsel estetiğini yansıtmalıdır.

İstanbul’da bulunan Devlet Tiyatroları Üsküdar Tekel Sahneleri, Beyazıt Devlet Kütüphanesi ve Bükreş’teki Romanya Mimarlar Birliği Binası ile Novotel bu çalışmada detaylıca analiz edilmiştir. Buna göre çeşitli tüzüklerin incelenmesinin ardından; yenilenen mevcut eski yapıların; tarihi değerleri ve kültürel geçmişin anısını yok sayıp saymadıkları, yeni işleve uygun mekânsal hacimlerin yeterli ve fonksiyonel olup olmadığı ya da görsel açıdan çevresi ile uyum / kontrast estetiği sağlayıp sağlamadığı gibi sorular üzerinden incelenen yapılar; mimarlıkta tarihi yapıları yeniden işlevlendirmede kontrast estetiği üzerine eleştirel bir yaklaşım ortaya çıkartmaktadır. 
CONTRAST AESTHETICS IN ARCHITECTURE
An Evaluation on Contrast Aesthetics in Re-Use of Historical Buildings

The aim of this study is to examine the architectural contrast which is formed by the different methods of the re-use of historical buildings in the context of aesthetics and function.
Some of the historical public spaces such as landmarks of the cities have become unfunctional in terms of todays circumstances or fall into disuse because of the fires, earthquakes or other reasons such as the bombings during wars.
In this study, four different renovation methods which are re-use, renovation, adaptive reuse and partial protection are defined and analysed by the examples from around Turkey and the world. These new approaches whom combine the popular architectural elements with historical buildings are criticized a lot becasue it is difficult to create new images of the historical buildings in the cognitive memory of the city and society.

Renovation projects must be suitable for the norms of contemporary architecture and also should not disrupt the urban silhouette of the city. In this sense, “context” should be handled in a way to understand and research the geography and the architectural culture of the historical area. The “renovated / transformed historical buildings”, should not disturb the surrounding structures and not corrupt the natural atmosphere of the city indeed they need to
catch the harmony in disparity and reflect the formal aesthetics of contrast if there is one.

State Theatres of Uskudar Tekel Stages, Beyazıt State Library of Istanbul, The Union of Romanian Architects Building and Novotel of Bucharest are the structures which have been analysed in detail in this study. Accordingly, after the examination of various architectural charters; these renovated buildings are examined  through questions such as whether they ignore the historical values and the memory of the cultural past or not, whether the new volumes designed for the new functions are sufficient and functional enough or not and is there a contrast aesthetics between the old and the new building…The answers provide us to criticize the harmony of the re-used / renovated historical buildings in the context of aesthetics.

Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper compares the word order patterns of English and French adverbial connectors of contrast in a comparable bilingual corpus of quality newspaper editorials. The study shows that the two languages offer the same possibilities in terms of connector positioning but differ markedly in the preferred patterns that they display. In both languages, connector placement proves to be influenced by three main types of factors: language-specific syntactic, rhetorical and lexical factors. The notion of Rheme, which tends to be under-researched in the literature in comparison to that of Theme, plays a key role in the analysis.

The aim of this study is to provide a generally valid and detailed explanation (definition) of the conceptual structure of concession, delimiting its nucleus notional meaning and trying to identify its affinities as well differences in respect to other relations within the general domain of contrast. [Work presented during the Seminar at the Former Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) on 3rd March 2009]

In this dissertation, adopting Rizzi’s (1997) Split-CP hypothesis, I provide a unified account for various elliptical structures in Persian on the basis of the interaction between information structure and ellipsis licensing feature bundles. I argue that ellipsis is constrained by information structure, in particular topic and focus. Only the elements that carry contrastive topic or contrastive focus features can survive ellipsis while the other elements are elided under identity with their corresponding elements in the antecedent clause. I discuss Merchant’s (2001) theory of ellipsis, in which the elements that survive ellipsis have a focus feature, and show that his approach cannot account for the Persian data. I argue that it is contrast that saves elements from being elided. To account for elliptical constructions in Persian, I propose the Contrast Condition on Ellipsis, which has three conditions: i) Ellipsis Condition: ellipsis is possible only in contexts in which an element in a sentence involving ellipsis contrasts with its corresponding element in the antecedent clause, ii) Identity Condition on the Remnant: the element that survives ellipsis must be in a contrastive relationship with its correlate and they must have identical information structure, and iii) Identity Condition on the Elided Elements: an element can be elided only if it is identical to its corresponding element in the antecedent clause. Regarding licensing ellipsis, I propose that ellipsis in Persian is licensed by the heads that have a focus feature, i.e. Foc(us) head, Pol(arity) head and Int(errogative) head. The proposed licensing heads are the result of the restrictions on the feature bundles that are possible in Persian. The [E] feature (Merchant 2001), which licenses the deletion of its complement at the PF level, can bundle with i) a strong uninterpretable contrastive focus [ConF] feature, [E, uConF*], ii) a strong uninterpretable [wh] feature, [E, uwh*], and iii) an uninterpretable [Pol] feature, [E, uPol].The [uConF*] and [uwh*] features trigger the movement of the elements with interpretable [wh] and [ConF] features out of the phrase that is specified for deletion. On the other hand, the [uPol] feature is satisfied by having a polarity marker in the Spec of PolP. The polarity marker can be affirmative or negative, depending on the polarity of the preceding clause. Based on the proposed theory, I study various elliptical structures in Persian. In chapters 2 and 3, I provide an in depth analysis of Verb-stranding and Stripping constructions with negation, respectively. In chapter 4, I provide an overview of Why-stripping, What-stripping, Cherā-stripping, Gapping, Sluicing, Fragment Answers, and Noun Phrase Ellipsis.

RESUMO Metacontingência, definida como um conjunto de contingências comportamentais entrelaçadas que produzem um produto agregado mantido por uma consequência, é uma unidade de análise no nível cultural, análoga à tríplice contingência. Estudos realizados na área têm tratado a metacontingência como uma relação condicional de dois termos, desconsiderando a função dos estímulos antecedentes. Em função da importância dos estímulos discriminativos sobre a emissão do comportamento, e buscando estudar os processos básicos envolvidos, o presente estudo teve como objetivo investigar os efeitos do processo de discriminação em tarefas de cooperação. O procedimento foi realizado a partir de um jogo colaborativo em um tabuleiro de xadrez virtual e teve como produto agregado o encontro dos cavalos. O experimento contou com quatro fases: Linha de Base, Treino de Discriminação, Teste de Discriminação e Teste de Generalização. Participaram do experimento 22 estudantes universitários, distribuídos em 11 duplas. Cada dupla passou pelas quatro fases e participou da atividade apenas uma vez. As medidas observadas foram: taxa de produto agregado ao longo das quatro fases, número de movimentos realizados e índice de dispersão. Os resultados indicam que ocorreu responder diferencial entre os estímulos que sinalizavam as diferentes metacontingências em vigor, embora os dados no Teste de Generalização não tenham sido sistemáticos. Outro efeito observado foi o de contraste comportamental, quando foi introduzida uma condição de extinção na fase de Treino. Os dados relacionados ao número de movimentos e índice de dispersão demonstraram a estereotipia gerada pelo reforçamento e variabilidade induzida pela extinção, ambos efeitos observados no comportamento operante. ABSTRACT Metacontingency, defined as a set of interlocking behavioral contingencies that produce an aggregate product maintained by a consequence, is a unit of analysis similar to the triple contingency. Studies in this area have treated the metacontingency as a conditional relation of two terms, disregarding the role of antecedent stimuli. Due to the importance of discriminative stimuli on the emission of behavior, and in an attempt to study the basic processes involved, this study aimed to investigate the effects of the discrimination process in metacontingencies. The procedure involved a collaborative game on a virtual chessboard and defined the aggregated product as the meeting of two knights. The experiment consisted of four phases: Baseline, Discrimination Training, Discrimination Test and Generalization Test. Twenty-two college students, distributed in 11 dyads, participated in the experiment. Each dyad participated in the activity only once. The measures were the rate of the aggregate product over the four phases, the number of movements, and dispersion index. The results indicated the occurrence of differential responding to the stimuli correlated with the different metacontingencies (stimulus control) although generalization test data were unsystematic. Behavioral contrast occurred after the introduction of an extinction condition in the training phase. The number of movements and the dispersion index showed the stereotyped pattern generated by the reinforcement, and variability induced by extinction, both effects observed in operant behavior.

The positive contrast gastrointestinal study is a common non-invasive diagnostic technique that does not require anesthesia and enables good visualization of the digestive tract. Radiographic anatomy and reference intervals for gastrointestinal contrast transit time in inland bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) were established using seven animals administered 15 ml/kg of a 35% w/v suspension of barium by esophageal gavage. Dorso-ventral and lateral radiographic views were performed h, and then every 12 h up to 96 h after barium administration. Gastric emptying was complete at a median time of 10 h (range 4-24 h). Median jejunum and small intestinal emptying times were 1 h (range 30 min-2 h) and 29 h (range 24-48 h), respectively. Median transit time for cecum was 10 h (range 8-12 h). Median time for contrast to reach the colon was 31 h (range 12-72 h) after administration. Results were compared to those obtained in other reptilian species. This technique appeared safe in fasted bearded dragons and would be clinically applicable in other lizard species. C 2014 American College of Veterinary Radiology.

Deep learning and other similar machine learning techniques have a huge advantage over other AI methods: they do function when applied to real-world data, ideally from scratch, without human intervention. However, they have several shortcomings that mere quantitative progress is unlikely to overcome. The paper analyses these shortcomings as resulting from the type of compression achieved by these techniques, which is limited to statistical compression. Two directions for qualitative improvement, inspired by comparison with cognitive processes, are proposed here, in the form of two mechanisms: complexity drop and contrast. These mechanisms are supposed to operate dynamically and not through pre-processing as in neural networks. Their introduction may bring the functioning of AI away from mere reflex and closer to reflection.

Japanese has a postpositional particle wa which has been categorized as the expression of Ôliteral contrastÕ (e.g. John ate a pizza, but Mary didnÕt). This paper reexamines the functions of contrastive wa based on the collection of newspaper articles from the viewpoint of dialogical voices, and claims that contrastive wa manifests itself as the expression of the authorÕs multivoicedness, which often derives from our consciousness experiences (association, evaluation, conflict). The paper argues that the dialogicality of contrast does not exist in its own right but co-exists with pragmatic acts by which author and reader cooperate in a given context to arrive at agreement on the intended meanings. The import of the discovery of the authorÕs implicit voices is tentatively stated to reflect pedagogical implications.

Hyperbole is traditionally understood as exaggeration. I argue instead that the point of hyperbole is emphasis. By overstating that things are greater (lesser) than expected, hoped, or desired, we shift the salience of the target property, thus making it more emphatic. This enables to express surprise or other relevant affect in reaction to how much, or how little, our expectations have been either exceeded or thwarted. This purpose is well suited to hyperbolic expression. This is because hyperbole naturally draws a contrast between how things are and how they were expected to be, exaggerating the gap between them. I conclude by considering the characteristics of hyperbolic figures where hyperbole mixes with other figures of speech.

How does Mexican cinema challenge national status quo, the canon of whiteness, and hegemonic masculinity? This paper identifies the motif of contrast in two films by Alfonso Cuarón and demonstrates that dual narratives are the necessary means through which criticism is conveyed, and Mexico’s antithetical social and political dynamics are portrayed. Award-winning "Y tu mamá también" (2001) uses the genre of coming-of-age, road-trip movie to address the Mexican contradiction between revolutionary impetus and persisting patriarchal attitudes. The film is defined by duality: the married woman Luisa Cortés, visiting from Spain, seduces the two teenage Mexicans Julio Zapata and Tenoch Itúrbide; the character’s names are borrowed from historical Spanish colonizers and Mexican revolutionaries; the “sea, sex and sun” narrative is regularly interrupted by documentary-style episodes and their political voiceover; homoerotic tension is juxtaposed to demonstrations of traditional mexicanidad and macho instincts. Manifold contrasts, binaries and dualities also characterize the new Golden-Globe winner "Roma" (2018):
black/white, Indigenous/white, Mixtec/Spanish, motherhood/child-caregiver, dirt/cleanliness, speech/silence, etc. The camera moves constantly and yet draws attention to great detail. Reality and fiction mingle as lead actress Yalitza Aparicio realizes while acting that her character Cleo is having a stillborn baby. The figure of the Indigenous
domestic worker is put to the forefront, which goes against the cult of white beauty that very much inhabits Mexico from screens to billboards until today. By constantly confronting contraries, both films provide a space for what Gloria Anzaldúa called “a new consciousness” of mestizo/a, and here, Mexican at large, identity.

Keywords: Alfonso Cuarón, mexicanidad, race, masculinity, status quo

Lean is a continuous journey to grow and excel the company. Any company want to develop and cope with the world pace must adopt lean. However, in most of the organizations the management culture or people's mentality is not so good to embrace change. They have predestined mind set where no change is normally allowed. Lean is a cooperative way of working that involves all departments and all personnel to work together in a team for the betterment of the entire company. Without providing fixed solution of any problem it suggests the best way that people willingly accept to do. Lean normally deals with highest quality, shorter lead time and lowest cost. In Bangladesh, most of the garment manufacturing companies are experiencing a massive quality problem. We describe a case where traffic light, a tool of lean quality system was adopted to a garment manufacturing company in Bangladesh. We also provide the charts to contrast the before and after scenario in detail, in order to illustrate the company benefits. After the traffic light system being implemented, the quality status was improved, production capacity was increased; significant days were saved that enhanced the lead time and thus strengthen the supply chain.

In learning the meaning of a new term, children need to Wx its reference, learn its conventional meaning, and discover the meanings with which it contrasts. To do this, children must attend to adult speakers-the experts-and to their patterns of use. In the domain of color, children need to identify color terms as such, Wx the reference of each one, and learn how each is used in the language. But color is a property, and terms for properties appear to be more diYcult to grasp than do those for objects, actions, and relations. Although children Wnd some domains easier to learn than others, they depend in each case on the expertise of adult speakers.

In my teens, in the mid 90s, I set off on a quest to discover what gave Science Fiction its power. I had intuited that underneath all that hi-tech glitz, or dystopian grimness, there was something like a spiritual urge; the desire for transcendence. Now, many Buddhists have cited films such as 2001: a Space Odyssey and Star Wars for awakening their spiritual life back in the 70’s, but I place the origins of Science Fiction in the Nineteenth Century with the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. So does Brian Aldiss in his book on the history of SF, Billion Year Spree. I don’t consider it a coincidence that SF arrived around the time Christianity was weakening its hold on the western imagination, with the rise of scientific materialism as a widespread world view. Was Science Fiction a new channel for our religious urge perhaps? Certainly, Speculative Fiction (1) usually concerns the discovery of deeper life meanings, an exploration of the beyond, or the unknown in the broadest sense. In essence Buddhism concerns these also. In both cases we see a drive towards liberation from limited, unsatisfactory conditions.

Creating contrast between different elements in the narrative is one of the Ugaritic poet’s main poetic devices. This literary tool is employed to encourage the audience to elicit and produce narrative meaning. In ʾAqhat it is a prominent technique, abundant in the lexical make up and stylistic texture of the narrative, in its content, as well as in the narrative structure.
The examples analyzed in the article represent only a sampling of the Ugaritic poet's elaborate and complex range of literary creativity. They illustrate the prominence of this device and demonstrate that its use is akin to that familiar from biblical narrative. Thus, this essay also indirectly supports the thesis the literary precursors and background of biblical narrative poetics are reflected in the Ugaritic epics, and that these two corpora are representative of the same literary tradition, not only regard to thematics and language, but also in respect to their poetics.

Drawing upon the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics, this study investigates seven highly frequent adverbial connectors of contrast (i.e. however, instead, nevertheless, though, on the other (hand), still and in contrast) across three language registers, with a view to assessing the (combined) impact of lexis and register on their placement and discourse functions. The results show that both the frequency and positioning of the connectors investigated vary significantly across registers. In addition, the connectors investigated display clear lexical preferences, with each connector exhibiting its own distinctive placement pattern. When looking at both register and lexis simultaneously, two main types of placement profiles emerge: while some connectors display very stable placement profiles across registers, other lexical items exhibit rather variable patterns depending on the register in which they are used. In other words, whereas some connectors tend to display strong lexical priming, others exhibit some degree of what we might call ‘stylistic priming’. The study also provides some evidence of the benefits of a combination of systemic functional linguistics with corpus linguistics, notably with respect to the study of the Rheme.

A new polarized backlight system for liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) is presented in which one linear polarization is preferentially coupled out by anisotropic scattering. The lightguide consists of a polymeric polarization-dependent scattering film adhered to a transparent polymeric substrate. By changing the scattering power of the film, the polarized light outcoupling angles can be influenced and optimized to achieve a maximum outcoupling centered along the normal direction. The other linear polarization is mainly trapped in the lightguide and is shown to be recycled to enhance the overall light and/or energy efficiency. With a proper substrate choice, the achieved local contrast exceeds 14 over a 50-mm range. A collimated light input further enhances the polarized contrast to well over 17.

The Kazak honorific system has been described to consist of a number of second person forms and terms of address. In addition to these core honorific expressions, however, my recent study of spoken Kazak in the Chinese Altai reveals that there are many other politeness features-both linguistic and non-linguistic-that constitute a loosely integrated honorific register system. They include grammatical distinctions (e.g., singular/plural, past/perfect, confirmative/non-confirmative), lexical distinctions (e.g., Chinese titles/Kazak kin terms), prosody (e.g., loud/quiet, fast/slow), as well as non-linguistic features (e.g., smoking/ non-smoking, male facial hair grown/removed, serving of black tea/milk tea). This paper describes these "non-core" expressions and the semiotic processes in which they, together with the core expressions, form a dichotomous system of contrast between plain and honorific registers.

Objective: To evaluate the pain and cause of pain experienced by women undergoing hysterosalpingography (HSG) and contrast hysterosalpingo sonography (HyCoSy) with air in a saline solution for the assessment of uterine and tubal patency. Method: In this prospective study, 121 infertile women undergoing these 2 procedures measured the pain incurred using a digital/analog scale (1-10). We looked for correlations between pain level and variables pertaining to the procedures. Vagal effects and their persistence were also recorded. Results: The pain was less during HSG (median, 5) than during HyCoSy (median, 7). It was greater than menstrual pain for 38.8% of participants during HSG and for 70.5% of participants during HyCoSy. There was no correlation between pain and difficult catheter passage, degree of tubal obstruction, volume of contrast medium injected, or presence of IgG antibodies to Chlamydia when these variables were studied for HyCoSy alone. However, the strong correlation between pain score and volume of contrast medium injected during each procedure seems to explain the significantly higher pain levels during HyCoSy (P b 0.001). In 65.3% and 57.8% of participants, respectively, the pain disappeared immediately after the HSG or HyCoSy. Only mild vagal effects were recorded following both procedures, in 0.8% of participants after HSG and 2.5% of participants after HyCoSy. Conclusion: Hysterosalpingo contrast sonography is similar to HSG regarding rapidity of pain disappearance, and infrequency and moderation of vagal effects, but the level of pain is slightly higher, probably due to the greater volume of medium injected.