A geometric construction of Mathon's perp-system from four lines of PG(5,3)

We give a new construction of the Mathon perp-system of the five dimensional projective space over the field with three elements, starting from four lines

Deaf epistemologies as a critique and alternative to the practice of science: an anthropological perspective

IN THE LAST DECADE, and responding to the criticism of orientalism, anthropology has engaged in a self-critical practice, working toward a postcolonial perspective on science and an epistemological stance of partial and situated knowledge (Pinxten, 2006; Pinxten & Note, 2005). In deaf studies, anthropological and sociological studies employing qualitative and ethnographic methods have introduced a paradigm shift. Concepts of deaf culture and deaf identity have been employed as political tools, contributing to the emancipation process of deaf people. However, recent anthropological studies in diverse local contexts indicate the cultural construction of these notions. From this viewpoint, deaf studies faces a challenge to reflect on the notions of culture, emancipation, and education from a nonexclusive, noncolonial perspective. Deaf studies research in a global context needs to deal with cultural and linguistic diversity in human beings and academia. This calls for epistemological reflection and new research methods

No Name, No Game

In an interesting contribution Joppa et al. (2011) revisit some aspects of the taxonomic impediment (Evenhuis 2007; http://www.cbd.int/gti/) and come to the conclusion that, contrary to the generally accepted idea, both the rates of species description and the number of taxonomists have increased exponentially since the 1950’s. Joppa et al. (2011) also note a marked decline in the number of species described per taxonomist which they attribute to the difficulty of finding new species in an ever declining ‘missing species pool’. Therefore, their results might be interpreted that today’s taxonomic workforce is sufficient to describe the remaining (shallow) ‘pool of missing species’. In this contribution, we question if this is indeed the case and propose a solution for speeding up taxonomic descriptions

80 years of electrospinning

Electrospinning is a relatively simple fibre-forming process and offers a unique method to produce nanofibers. The process exists at this moment 80 years and has seen a very turbulent history. There is a need to see what actually happened in this history. We have taken a brief look in the history of electrospinning. This paper is reporting on some of the aspects that electrospinning encountered. It is crucial to see that electrospinning has been used in different countries in different time periods. The history of electrospinning is mainly characterised by bad timing. The future of electrospinning looks however quit bright

Translating English non-human subjects in agentive contexts : a closer look at Dutch

While subjects of transitive action verbs in English and Dutch are typically realized as human agents (see Comrie 1989), both languages also feature instances of nonhuman agents in subject position. However, Vandepitte and Hartsuiker (2011) have shown that there are fewer options in Dutch and that translation issues present themselves in cases where both languages do not overlap. This paper wants to document overlap and differences in terms of non-prototypical subject realization by focussing on the strategies that are used in Dutch translations of six actions verbs (give, demonstrate, show, suggest, offer and tell) in combination with non-human subjects. Results reveal that a fair share of non-human subjects are also translated as such in the target language. Other strategies include occasional humanization of the non-human source text subjects, reduction of valency patterns with reduced agentivity vis-a-vis the English source-text sentences and shifts in the mapping of semantic roles onto syntactic functions

A geometric approach to Mathon maximal arcs

In 1969 Denniston gave a construction of maximal arcs of degree d in Desarguesian projective planes of even order q, for all d dividing q. In 2002 Mathon gave a construction method generalizing the one of Denniston. We will give a new geometric approach to these maximal arcs. This will allow us to count the number of isomorphism classes of Mathon maximal arcs of degree 8 in PG(2,2^h), h prime.Comment: 20 page