Victims without Philosophy: Intellectuals and Power; General Theory of Victims

There does not exist an easy way to discuss François Laruelle and it is impossible to be ecstatic about his writing. The two books under scrutiny here—Intellectuals and Power and General Theory of Victims—are, however, a relatively accessible introduction to the machinic parlance that Laruelle superposes onto philosophy’s presumed legibility. The human instance he discusses in both works is that of the victim. These two books could be both beneficial for and alienating to the wider readership in humanities: not for lack of originality (or even clarity), but due to the signature-style of conceptual resistance in Laruelle’s language. Virtually every-one—from gender studies to nationalism studies scholars—willing to submit herself to the conceptual skirmish dramatized in these two books has a lot to gain in order to renew her approach to the agency of the victim, the criminal, the survivor. The cunning proviso of the gain—to say this without diplomacy—is to take the unruly voyage of Laruelle through the syntactical mutilations of thought and language. Only then can one enthusiastically “recommend” these writings

A World of Becoming

It is difficult to respond in a genre other than philosophical prose when writing about one. Philosophical prose is a very demanding and small club: it is almost like the poetry club of philosophy recognized in and by itself. Few are the specimens of the genre and plenty are those raising hands from within. This is largely because genre-determined writing such as this one is both about style and Zeitgeist. And to rise up to the standards of styling the spirit(s) of time is an ordeal of both the heart and the mind even trained thinkers fail to do. With a sleight of hand William E. Connolly’s A World of Becoming enters the genre with due pump, and transforms it

VIABILITY CHARACTERISTICS AND PHYSIOLOGICAL BEHAVIORS IN CABBAGE SEEDS IN DEPENDS ON STAGE OF MATURITY

The main purposes of the present study were to establish the changes during different stage of maturity and development of cabbage seed as well as earliest behaviors of viability and harvesting data. The experiments were carried out with two typical Bulgarian cultivars Balkan and Ditmarsko ranno. Samples of seeds in different days after fl owering – 30, 40, 50 and 60 days were analyzed. The physiological parameters and viability and vigor were investigated. The weight of one seeds was highest between 40 and 50 days. The primary germination was observed in seed harvested in 30 days, but the stability one was registered on 60 day. The intensity of respiration and activity of enzyme peroxides changed during seed development and maturity

Bounds on changes in Ritz values for a perturbed invariant subspace of a Hermitian matrix

The Rayleigh-Ritz method is widely used for eigenvalue approximation. Given a matrix $X$ with columns that form an orthonormal basis for a subspace \X, and a Hermitian matrix $A$, the eigenvalues of $X^HAX$ are called Ritz values of $A$ with respect to \X. If the subspace \X is $A$-invariant then the Ritz values are some of the eigenvalues of $A$. If the $A$-invariant subspace \X is perturbed to give rise to another subspace \Y, then the vector of absolute values of changes in Ritz values of $A$ represents the absolute eigenvalue approximation error using \Y. We bound the error in terms of principal angles between \X and \Y. We capitalize on ideas from a recent paper [DOI: 10.1137/060649070] by A. Knyazev and M. Argentati, where the vector of absolute values of differences between Ritz values for subspaces \X and \Y was weakly (sub-)majorized by a constant times the sine of the vector of principal angles between \X and \Y, the constant being the spread of the spectrum of $A$. In that result no assumption was made on either subspace being $A$-invariant. It was conjectured there that if one of the trial subspaces is $A$-invariant then an analogous weak majorization bound should only involve terms of the order of sine squared. Here we confirm this conjecture. Specifically we prove that the absolute eigenvalue error is weakly majorized by a constant times the sine squared of the vector of principal angles between the subspaces \X and \Y, where the constant is proportional to the spread of the spectrum of $A$. For many practical cases we show that the proportionality factor is simply one, and that this bound is sharp. For the general case we can only prove the result with a slightly larger constant, which we believe is artificial.Comment: 12 pages. Accepted to SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications (SIMAX

Fingerprints of extreme climate events in Pinus sylvestris tree rings from Bulgaria

Tree-ring studies may help better understand climate variability and extreme climate event frequency and are especially useful in regions where detailed meteorological records lack. We studied the effect of droughts and unusually cold periods on Pinus sylvestris tree-ring width and wood anatomy. Study sites were selected along an altitudinal gradient on Vitosha Mountain, Bulgaria. Drought conditions caused the formation of narrow tree rings or light rings if the drought occurred in July-August at the lower altitude sites. In years with droughts in June and the first half of July, followed by precipitation in the middle of July, intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) were formed. Trees in the zone with optimal growth conditions produced fewer light rings and narrow rings in years with either strongest droughts or unusually cold summers. At the timberline zone, low summer temperature triggered narrow tree rings and light rings. Frost rings were formed when there was a drop in temperatures below the freezing point in the second half of May or at the beginning of June. Our findings show that studies of tree-ring anatomy may contribute to obtain further knowledge about extreme climatic events in the Balkan Peninsula and in other regions where meteorological data lac

CHARACTERISTICS OF HEMOLYTIC STREPTOCOCCI, ISOLATED FROM THE NASOPHARYNX OF HEALTHY AND AFFECTED CHILDREN IN VARNA AND DISTRICT OF VARNA

No abctract

It Will Never Be the Same Again

This paper describes the Conversations Led by Clients (CoLeC) model as practiced at several Bulgarian and Russian helping institutions as a development of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT). The model emphasizes therapeutic conversations as something that has to follow step by step from the clients’ enquiries. The questions include the mind-activating Question (MAQ): What do you think is the most useful question you can hear from me now? (or at our next session?); the time-oriented question: What do you think is most useful to talk about now: past, present or future?; the multiple-choice question: Which of these questions do you think is best for you right now? (from a list provided by the therapist); and the delayed-answers question: If client has no current answer, ask them to think about the question until the next session and propose self-questioning activities. CoLeC, being a step beyond some therapeutic models, is an initial effort to assist helping professionals find answers to this quite different question, “How should this client’s conversation with me be?” This makes it the beginning of a qualitatively new attitude to what we, as professionals, do. We hope that many, young and new to the profession, will not only join in, but also help further this way of thinking and doing as we see these types of conversations with clients, useful

Нозологична структура на смъртността в р България в периода 1990-2012 г

Вредица наши и чужди проучвания се посочва, че единот основните елементи на социалното и биологично равновесие е смъртността с нейните характеристики - равнище, причини, фактори, тенденции. Тя също е и определящ показател за здравното състояние на населението като цяло и на отделни негови възрастови, полови, социални, професионални и други групи, формирани по определени критерии