Derek Mahon's Seascapes Mediated through Greece: Antiquity in Modernity, Nature in Abstraction.

The article investigates various approaches to seascape in selected poems of the contemporary Irish poet, Derek Mahon, set against the background of references to Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney or Odysseus Elytis. The sea provides a perspective that cannot be overestimated in trying to get an insight into the communication and the clash between the culture of the South and the North. The two nations have often glimpsed at their reflection in the mirror of the surrounding seas, their history and mentality determined by their geographical position and largely insular experience. Elements such as the isolation from the mainland; the perception of the sea as a personification of the force ruling over life and death, as a threat and a promise; or the focus on some characteristic natural phenomena such as light or surface dominate the seascape imagery both in Greek and Irish literature. The sea often constitutes a border of antagonistic and complementary worlds: dream and reality, light and darkness, male and female, the real world and the underworld – and the vantage point of the poet changes accordingly. Some poems under discussion also explore a series of myths linked with the sea, the best known of which, the Odyssey, has remained a frame of reference for numerous contemporary Greek and Irish poets. Elytis's Cyclades or Longley's Mayo provide us with examples of 'private homelands'. As Longley once observed, “his part of Mayo” reminds him of Ithaca (sandy and remote) and of Greece in general: “I’ve often thought that that part of Ireland . . . looks like Greece. Or Greece looks like a dust-bowl version of Ireland,” which triggers further deliberations on seascape as the common ground for the two countries. Just as Elytis's Cyclades or Longley's Mayo, Mahon’s Cyclades provide us with examples of 'private homelands'. The focus of this article is Derek Mahon’s seascapes: purely Greek (‘Aphrodite’s Pool’), Irish seen through the prism of the Greek ones (‘Achill’) and purely Irish (‘Recalling Aran’). The level of abstraction in the last category is compared with Odysseus Elytis’s imagery of the Cyclades, while the first poem demystifies a practice which I termed as ‘myth trading’, one of consumerist tourism techniques

Synthesis of warburganal and related compounds

Imperial Users onl

Green-Technology Automobiles: Can modern innovations save the environment and consumers\u27 pockets

Cars of the past are notorious for poor fuel efficiency and high carbon emissions. With the presence of hybrid technology, along with a variety of other green innovations, many of these negative side effects can be mitigated. The purpose of this study is to answer the question: how do green technology vehicles compare with similar models that exclude such innovations in relation to efficiency and price? A total of 47 green-tech vehicles were identified and compared against their base model counterparts. Vehicle weight, horsepower, fuel efficiency and other variables were matched within pairs (green-tech vs. base) and between car types (sedans, SUVs and trucks). Regardless of vehicle type and green-tech, weight proved to be an influential factor, showing that as curb weight increased, fuel efficiency decreased. Compared to the base models, green-tech luxury vehicles also exhibited few improvements in fuel efficiency with disproportionately high growth in price. Non-luxury green-tech sedans ranging from 2500lbs to 4000lbs showed the largest improvements in efficiency while also maintaining an average MSRP of $28996±1089, producing a green-tech vehicle that is economically affordable. The impressive results from this category of vehicles suggest that consumer investment in non-luxury green sedans may not only help to save money in fuel consumption, but also save the environment

Do children enhance phonetic contrasts in speech directed to a hearing-impaired peer?

This study examines whether normal-hearing (NH) children enhance phonetic contrasts when speaking to a hearing-impaired (HI) peer. A problem-solving ‘Grid’ task was developed to elicit frequent repetitions of /p/-/b/, /s/-/S/ and /i/-/I/ segmental contrasts and point vowels in communicative spontaneous speech. Eighteen NH children between 9 and 15 years old performed the task once with a NH friend and once with a HI friend. Both category means and within-speaker variability were analysed. Results suggest that although HI interlocutors are likely to find the phonetic contrasts difficult to produce and perceive, children’s HI-directed speech contains little evidence of phonetic category enhancement

Triadic dialogue in oral communication tasks: What are the implications for language learning?

Asymmetry in classroom discourse, typified by teachers' frequent use of inauthentic initiating question turns, does not afford the best opportunities for the learning of language skills. More favourable conditions would appear to be associated with collaborative discourse patterns that display genuine interest in the child's contribution and build on, and respond to, the child's turn. Video-recordings were made of consecutive episodes of 'story-writing', 'speaking-book' and 'circle-time' activities to explore the sequential implications of the teachers'initiations across each task. During speaking-book the teacher initiates with topic initial elicitors which invite news, ideas or opinions from the child. In story-writing the teacher employs invitations, which call for the children to generate ideas or suggestions. Analysis of teacher follow-up turns demonstrates ways in which they recast and reformulate the children's response turns and elicit further material related to the pupils' agendas. By contrast, there is limited evidence of negotiation in the circle-time activity. The study demonstrates the potentially facilitative role played by triadic dialogue in language learning and therefore has professional significance for all those involved in the development of oral language skills in classrooms. © 2006 J. Radford et al

The General Practice of Art Law

Art law is a general specialty since what we call art law is always some other type of law in the first instance - contract law, copyright law, tax law, estate and trust law, constitutional law - which happens to involve artists or art work

Interobserver Reliability in Describing Radiographic Lung Changes After Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy

Purpose Radiographic lung changes after stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) vary widely between patients. Standardized descriptions of acute (≤6 months after treatment) and late (\u3e6 months after treatment) benign lung changes have been proposed but the reliable application of these classification systems has not been demonstrated. Herein, we examine the interobserver reliability of classifying acute and late lung changes after SBRT. Methods and materials A total of 280 follow-up computed tomography scans at 3, 6, and 12 months post-treatment were analyzed in 100 patients undergoing thoracic SBRT. Standardized descriptions of acute lung changes (3- and 6-month scans) include diffuse consolidation, patchy consolidation and ground glass opacity (GGO), diffuse GGO, patchy GGO, and no change. Late lung change classifications (12-month scans) include modified conventional pattern, mass-like pattern, scar-like pattern, and no change. Five physicians scored the images independently in a blinded fashion. Fleiss\u27 kappa scores quantified the interobserver agreement. Results The Kappa scores were 0.30 at 3 months, 0.20 at 6 months, and 0.25 at 12 months. The proportion of patients in each category at 3 and 6 months was as follows: Diffuse consolidation 11% and 21%; patchy consolidation and GGO 15% and 28%; diffuse GGO 10% and 11%; patchy GGO 15% and 15%; and no change 49% and 25%, respectively. The percentage of patients in each category at 12 months was as follows: Modified conventional 46%; mass-like 16%; scar-like 26%; and no change 12%. Uniform scoring between the observers occurred in 26, 8, and 14 cases at 3, 6, and 12 months, respectively. Conclusions Interobserver reliability scores indicate a fair agreement to classify radiographic lung changes after SBRT. Qualitative descriptions are insufficient to categorize these findings because most patient scans do not fit clearly into a single classification. Categorization at 6 months may be the most difficult because late and acute lung changes can arise at that time