Linguistic complexity: English vs. Polish, text vs. corpus

We analyze the rank-frequency distributions of words in selected English and Polish texts. We show that for the lemmatized (basic) word forms the scale-invariant regime breaks after about two decades, while it might be consistent for the whole range of ranks for the inflected word forms. We also find that for a corpus consisting of texts written by different authors the basic scale-invariant regime is broken more strongly than in the case of comparable corpus consisting of texts written by the same author. Similarly, for a corpus consisting of texts translated into Polish from other languages the scale-invariant regime is broken more strongly than for a comparable corpus of native Polish texts. Moreover, we find that if the words are tagged with their proper part of speech, only verbs show rank-frequency distribution that is almost scale-invariant

What a Suave Man he Was! […] The Earth Trembled as he Perished Two Polish Suicides: Wołodyjowski – Wokulski

There is more to the literary polemic between the author of The Doll and the creator of The Trilogy than merely Prus’ contradictory review of Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword. It also includes The Doll’s multifarious allusiveness to Fire in the Steppe, manifested in particular in the meaningful, symbolic ending, whereby both protagonists blow themselves up, literally and metaphorically cornered in old buildings. Prus converses with Sienkiewicz in a discreet manner, though the careful reader will spot contentious issues. These include the struggle for a different type of protagonist – not a hero, but an individual entangled in romantic myths, paralysing their life forces; a different perception of the past, rational and fair rather than glorified and martyrological; finally, a different outlook on the present and the future, promoting entrepreneurship and economy as tools for the development of Poland as a European partner, rather than the idealistic focus on the utopian, foregone concepts of military achievements. The text highlights the similarities in the characters of Wokulski and Wołodyjowski, with special emphasis on the final scenes and the demise of the world after the protagonists’ respective disappearance. The two famous literary suicides, patterning after the deed of Ordon as depicted in Mickiewicz’s poem, have been parodied (e.g. by Mrożek) and adopted, thus becoming literary weapons in the struggle with the Polish mythopoeia, xenophobia, and exaggerated patriotism

Complex network analysis of literary and scientific texts

We present results from our quantitative study of statistical and network properties of literary and scientific texts written in two languages: English and Polish. We show that Polish texts are described by the Zipf law with the scaling exponent smaller than the one for the English language. We also show that the scientific texts are typically characterized by the rank-frequency plots with relatively short range of power-law behavior as compared to the literary texts. We then transform the texts into their word-adjacency network representations and find another difference between the languages. For the majority of the literary texts in both languages, the corresponding networks revealed the scale-free structure, while this was not always the case for the scientific texts. However, all the network representations of texts were hierarchical. We do not observe any qualitative and quantitative difference between the languages. However, if we look at other network statistics like the clustering coefficient and the average shortest path length, the English texts occur to possess more clustered structure than do the Polish ones. This result was attributed to differences in grammar of both languages, which was also indicated in the Zipf plots. All the texts, however, show network structure that differs from any of the Watts-Strogatz, the Barabasi-Albert, and the Erdos-Renyi architectures

Take the Time to Walk

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. The busyness of life distracts me from the One I long to be with. Sometimes life just takes over, and I get busy writing this paper and reading that chapter, prioritizing what’s due first. Then I remember that God is always first and I stop to revaluate my priorities. I take the time to refocus and be with my Creator. The best times I have with God are when I’m taking a walk outside

Emocije u diskursu književnoga eseja: Olga Tokarczuk o romanu „Lutka“ Bolesłava Prusa

The article interprets Olga Tokarczuk’s essay Lalka i Perła about the novel Lalka by Bolesław Prus. An attempt will be made to explain what cognitive value this text has for the reader of Tokarczuk’s prose and for the reader who is interested in Prus’s novel, and to answer the question whether this essay can be considered as a contribution to literary-historical or other literary-scientific knowledge about Prus. The central thesis of the article is that Tokarczuk’s writing about Prus is an example of emotionalized discourse of fictionalized historiographical prose, a hybrid and marginal essayistic genre that appropriates the features of both fictional prose and modern literary scientific writing, compressing some of the traditional essay’s procedures, such as presenting personal viewpoints and intentionally impregnating the discourse with private emotional manifestations. The aim of the paper is the analysis of Tokarczuk’s writing and the assessment of the scope of her essay in the context of knowledge of Prus’s novel.U članku se tumači esej Lalka i perła (Lutka i perla) Olge Tokarczuk o romanu Lalka (Lutka) Bolesława Prusa. Pokušat će se objasniti kakvu taj tekst ima spoznajnu vrijednost za čitatelja proze Tokarczuk i za čitatelja kojega zanima Prusov roman te odgovoriti na pitanje može se li taj esej držati prinosom i književnopovijesnoj, ili nekoj drugoj književnoznanstvenoj, spoznaji o Prusu. Središnja je teza članka da je pisanje Tokarczuk o Prusu primjer emocionaliziranoga diskursa fikcionalizirane historiografske proze, hibridnoga i rubnoga esejističkoga žanra koji prisvaja značajke i fikcionalne proze i modernoga književnoznanstvenoga pisanja, komprimirajući i neke postupke tradicionalnoga eseja, kao što je iznošenje osobnih stajališta i intencionalno impregniranje diskursa privatnim emocionalnim očitovanjima. Cilj je rada analiza pisanja Tokarczuk i procjena dosega njezina eseja u kontekstu poznavanja Prusova romana

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Medical School Musculoskeletal Curriculum at an Academic Medical Center

Background: Musculoskeletal disorders are common medical problems encountered by physicians and affected 126.6 million Americans in 2012. Musculoskeletal education has inadequate in United States medical schools. Objective: To determine the musculoskeletal competency of third year medical students. Methods: A cross-sectional 25-question nationally validated musculoskeletal competency exam was given to the third year medical students. A survey was given to second and third year medical students to assess students’ level of interest in musculoskeletal medicine and their feedback regarding the curriculum. Results: The mean score of the competency exam was 69.0%. There was 48/107 (44.9%) students’ who reached the minimum passing score of 70%. Free-response feedback from both classes featured themes of more hands-on learning, a longer clinical block, and more small-group learning sessions. Conclusions: Third year medical students scored relatively well on the exam. Student feedback suggests the 2-week musculoskeletal block is useful and relevant to their future careers

Surviving the Death of God: Existentialism, God, and Man at Post-WWII Yale

“This is our world to build, adorn, or destroy, not God\u27s or anyone else\u27s.” These were the words of Hugh McClean, a Yale student both before and after the Second World War. When the war ended, McClean and thousands of his peers returned from duty in Europe and the Pacific to complete their education at colleges across the United States. They saw the world differently than they had before; they certainly viewed the world differently than their parents and grandparents. They had heard leaders of the world’s warring nations invoke destiny to validate their warfare. Some of these teenagers had even been behind the unprecedented killing machines that decided whose destiny would prevail. And now with the invention of the atom bomb, new questions about the future emerged, as humankind found itself on the brink of annihilation. Even if the fate of the American cause proved true in WWII, uneasiness came with the onset of the Cold War. The middle of the twentieth century was a time for questions. Where was God through it all? Could Nietzsche have been correct? And, if so, could man survive the Death of God? Many of the boys who had liberated Europe returned to the States asking these kinds of questions. “The war was a catastrophic event,” one of McClean’s classmates recounted. “When you have catastrophic events, people think about whether the philosophies they had heretofore believed were true. It seemed to be unending because of the contest of beliefs between American and Russian ideas. And God Is Dead was a part of that.”2 Even as they coped with the wartime deaths of friends and rejected the beliefs of their parents, most American youths nevertheless remained optimistic about their future. For those who had survived the war, there was beautiful opportunity in being able to question beliefs and seek novel solutions to contemporary problems. It was their world to build, adorn, or destroy

Junior Recital: Peter Lalka, Piano

Kemp Recital Hall Saturday Evening April 20, 1996 4:30p.m

Management of Inorganic Input and Empty Fruit Bunches Towards Efficient Nutrient Use by Young Oil Palm

The mechanism governing the effect of oil palm EFB on yield have not been thoroughly investigated. Against this background, four experiments were set up; one in the laboratory and three in the field, in an attempt to determine the decomposition pattern of EFB, identify the quality factor(s) controlling EFB decomposition, determine the effect of EFB application on the leaching of N and uptake of N and K fertilisers. Results from the laboratory experiment indicate that, EFB decomposed in 3 distinct phases: viz. an initial immobilisation phase, a later immobilisation phase of reduced intensity and a final re-mineralisation phase. Stalks generally decomposed faster than the spikelets. In the field experiment, the decomposition rates and patterns of EFB component parts were relatively the same as in the laboratory. EFB-lignin, carbon, polyphenol and nitrogen dynamics were evaluated with time and all four-quality parameters showed a strong correlation with soil N dynamics. However EFB-N had a stronger negative (R2 = -0.95) relation (P=O.OI) with soil N dynamics. Application of EFB parts lead to a complete soil N immobilisation for the entire 36 weeks study while EFB tissue N increased with time. Evaluation of leaching of K, Ca, and Mg from EFB, using two sampling methods viz non-destructive sampling (NDS) and destructive sampling (DS) methods, indicated very high loses of K (87 - 88%), Mg (80 - 86%) and Ca (83 - 88%). For all treatments, K was lost at a much faster rate than Mg and Ca. A comparison of the two sampling methods showed that the NDS method was better as it accounted for higher quantities of nutrients leached