Parallelism and Orders of Signification (Parallelism Dynamics I)

This essay sets out an approach to parallelism in verbal art as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate at multiple orders (or levels) of signification. It examines parallelism in the sounds through which words are communicated, in language communicated by those sounds, in symbols or minimal units of narration communicated through language, and then in more complex units of narration communicated through those symbols or units. Attention is given to how these different levels of parallelism interrelate and may diverge, while revealing that parallelism at all of these levels reflects a single semiotic phenomenon.Abstract from website.Frog is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow and Associate Professor in Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. He completed his Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies at the University College London in 2010 and his Docentship (Habilitation) in Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki in 2013. He specializes in theory and methods related to the study of oral poetry and mythology, working mainly with Finno-Karelian kalevalaic poetry and Old Norse poetry and prose

Mythological Names and dróttkvætt Formulae I: When is a Valkyrie Like a Spear?

This article explores patterns of language use in oral poetry within a variety of semantic formula. Such a formula may vary its surface texture in relation to phonic demands of the metrical environment in which it is realized. Metrically entangled kennings in Old Norse dróttkvætt poetry provide material for a series of case studies focusing on variation in realizing formulae of this type. Old Norse kennings present a semantic formula of a particular type which is valuable as an example owing to the extremes of textural variation that it enables. Focus will be on variation between two broad semantic categories in expressing the formula’s consistent unit of meaning that are otherwise unambiguously distinct: proper names for mythological beings and poetic terms for weapons and armour. This article introduces an approach to kennings as semantic formulae and includes an illustrative case study on kennings meaning ‘battle’ in the last three metrical positions of a dróttkvætt line. The case study is simultaneously used to demonstrate the degree of integration of mythological proper names in the poetic register. This article contains only the first case study of a series. It provides foundations for examining variation in the associative links exhibited by names of mythic beings as a category according to the metrical positions in which a battle-kenning is realized

Multimedial Parallelism in Ritual Performance (Parallelism Dynamics II)

This article approaches parallelism as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate across verbal art and other media in performance. It presents an approach to different media and the uniting performance mode as construing "metered frames." Multimedial parallelism is analyzed as a phenomenon resulting from the coordination of expressions in relation to these frames to form members of parallel groups. The focus is on rituals that involve interaction with the unseen world. Discussion of parallelism between speech and empirical aspects of performance extends to the potential for presumed parallelism between speech and unseen objects, agents, and forces. John Miles Foley's concept of "performance arena" is extended to performers' and audiences' perceptions and expectations about "reality" in ritual performance. The mapping of otherworld locations and cosmology onto empirical spaces in performance is also discussed.Abstract from website.Frog is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow and Associate Professor in Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. He completed his Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies at the University College London in 2010 and his Docentship (Habilitation) in Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki in 2013. He specializes in theory and methods related to the study of oral poetry and mythology, working mainly with Finno-Karelian kalevalaic poetry and Old Norse poetry and prose

Poison Frog Colors Are Honest Signals Of Toxicity, Particularly For Bird Predators

Antipredator defenses and warning signals typically evolve in concert. However, the extensive variation across taxa in both these components of predator deterrence and the relationship between them are poorly understood. Here we test whether there is a predictive relationship between visual conspicuousness and toxicity levels across 10 populations of the color-polymorphic strawberry poison frog, Dendrobates pumilio. Using a mouse-based toxicity assay, we find extreme variation in toxicity between frog populations. This variation is significantly positively correlated with frog coloration brightness, a viewer-independent measure of visual conspicuousness (i.e., total reflectance flux). We also examine conspicuousness from the view of three potential predator taxa, as well as conspecific frogs, using taxon-specific visual detection models and three natural background substrates. We find very strong positive relationships between frog toxicity and conspicuousness for bird-specific perceptual models. Weaker but still positive correlations are found for crab and D. pumilio conspecific visual perception, while frog coloration as viewed by snakes is not related to toxicity. These results suggest that poison frog colors can be honest signals of prey unpalatability to predators and that birds in particular may exert selection on aposematic signal design.Integrative Biolog

Ptychographic reconstruction algorithm for frequency resolved optical gating: super-resolution and supreme robustness

Frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) is probably the most popular technique for complete characterization of ultrashort laser pulses. In FROG, a reconstruction algorithm retrieves the pulse from a measured spectrogram, yet current FROG reconstruction algorithms require and exhibit several restricting features that weaken FROG performances. For example, the delay step must correspond to the spectral bandwidth measured with large enough SNR a condition that limits the temporal resolution of the reconstructed pulse, obscures measurements of weak broadband pulses, and makes measurement of broadband mid-IR pulses hard and slow because the spectrograms become huge. We develop a new approach for FROG reconstruction, based on ptychography (a scanning coherent diffraction imaging technique), that removes many of the algorithmic restrictions. The ptychographic reconstruction algorithm is significantly faster and more robust to noise than current FROG algorithms, which are based on generalized projections (GP). We demonstrate, numerically and experimentally, that ptychographic reconstruction works well with very partial spectrograms, e. g. spectrograms with reduced number of measured delays and spectrograms that have been substantially spectrally filtered. In addition, we implement the ptychogrpahic approach to blind second harmonic generation (SHG) FROG and demonstrate robust and complete characterization of two unknown pulses from a single measured spectrogram and power spectrum of only one of the pulses. We believe that the ptychograpy-based approach will become the standard reconstruction procedure in FROG and related diagnostics methods, allowing successful reconstructions from so far unreconstructable spectrograms.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Narratiiv kui ravi: riituse-etendus ja narratiivi aktualiseerumine kogemusena

This paper addresses theoretical issues of narrative in an attempt to approach the semantics of understanding underlying the performance of certain healing rites. The first section of the paper introduces the term narrative power to refer to the cultural load developed by narratives and narrative strategies and develops a framework forapproaching healing rite performance as the application of strategies which actualize narrative as experience. The Finno-Karelian tietäjä tradition is discussed in relation to shamanic rite performance and memorized traditions of incantations, particularly those which incorporate historiolae. The European incantation tradition exhibits a fixed text approach which may bear continuities in strategies of application but continuities between performance and the healing event are ambiguous, open to interpretation, and the tradition does not require ‘understanding’ at all. Shamanic traditions are incredibly diverse, but they present an opposite extreme of subjective, internalized understandings of the mythic world and strategies for manipulating narrative power as an effective means of negotiating the recovery of a patient in interaction with the unseen world. The rites of the tietäjä have evolved between these two sets of strategies. The poetic meter inclines individual lines of verse to crystallize and somewhat flexible constellations of lines emerge as familiar compositional units in incantations and other genres. The degree to which rite performance was a variable emergent narrative nearer shamanic rites or a consistently reproduced – if verbally flexible – narrative more akin to the strategies of the European incantation would be dependent on the individual tietäjä, even if in the cultural milieu emphasis was placed on understanding the unseen world and the significance ofelements manipulated in the incantations. These traditions have been addressed here in generalizations in order to offer an overview of strategies applied and also how those strategies both interact with and affect other phenomena in the tradition ecology which for centuries may have been shaping a remarkable range of traditions and aspects of the worldview more generally.However, it must be remembered that these traditions have always been dynamic rather than uniform, and it is through the flexibility and openness to reinterpretation that the narrative power of these traditions could persist as viable instruments for crisis resolution through centuries of cultural change

Parallelism and Orders of Signification (Parallelism Dynamics I)

Peer reviewe

Complete characterization of ultrashort pulse sources at 1550 nm

This paper reviews the use of frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) to characterize mode-locked lasers producing ultrashort pulses suitable for high-capacity optical communications systems at wavelengths around 1550 nm, Second harmonic generation (SHG) FROG is used to characterize pulses from a passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser, and both single-mode and dual-mode gain-switched semiconductor lasers. The compression of gain-switched pulses in dispersion compensating fiber is also studied using SHG-FROG, allowing optimal compression conditions to be determined without a priori assumptions about pulse characteristics. We also describe a fiber-based FROG geometry exploiting cross-phase modulation and show that it is ideally suited to pulse characterization at optical communications wavelengths. This technique has been used to characterize picosecond pulses with energy as low as 24 pJ, giving results in excellent agreement with SHG-FROG characterization, and without any temporal ambiguity in the retrieved puls