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Johnson-Laird and Byrne proposed in 2002 that, beyond the two traditional interpretations that are assigned to if, that is, the material and the biconditional ones, eight more combinations of possibilities related to their meaning can be attributed to this kind of sentences. The initial hypothesis in the present study is that not all of those ten interpretations should be usual in academic texts, since some of them resort, for example, to figurative language or irony. In this way, a study of a psychology paper is carried out in order to check that hypothesis. The results are that, at least in that paper, the uses of if tend to be linked to the interpretation that both Johnson-Laird and Byrne and the literature in general relate to the biconditional.

In the last decade, much effort has been invested in using methanol as an oil-soluble chemical marker for assessing the condition of insulating paper. The use of this marker as paper life index presents many advantages particularly with new transformers insulated with thermally upgraded papers. However, until now, no interpretation model has been available for its extensive use by the transformer community. In this paper, a methanol-based interpretation model is presented for the first time using postmortem paper analysis on core-type transformers. This model allows the evaluation of the average degree of polymerization of a transformer's cellulose winding. Furthermore, threshold values based on the methanol concentration are given using this approach. Finally, model validation was performed on a limited number of papers taken from transformers being assessed in the repair shop. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Over the last fifteen years scholarship on postcolonial literatures has increasingly turned to readers as the focus of empirical study. While such research has helped make visible the agency of postcolonial readers in global literary exchanges, it has tended to overlook the many ways in which postcolonial subjects’ encounters with texts can exceed or circumvent literal reading. The Asian-African-Canadian novelist M.G. Vassanji has been particularly attuned to the physicality of paper, most definitively in two of his novels set in East Africa, The Gunny Sack (1989) and The Book of Secrets (1994). In this article I analyse how Vassanji’s characters, both literate and illiterate, engage paper’s physical properties to ground their everyday practices of memory, valuation, and interpretation. By attending to paper’s materiality in Vassanji’s work postcolonial studies can situate its own reading practices in the context of material ways of doing things with texts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Russian school, the total normalized gradient method belongs to the most wide‐spread of direct interpretation methods for potential field data. This method was also used and partly developed by many experts from abroad. The main advantage of the total normalized gradient method is its relative independence of parameters such as the expected differential density of interpreted structures. The method is built from a construction of a specially transformed field (total normalized gradient) on a section crossing the potential field sources. The special properties of this transformed field allow it to be used to detect the source positions. From the 1960s, the mathematical basis of the method underwent enormous development and several modifications of the method have been elaborated. The total normalized gradient operator itself represents a relatively complicated, non‐linear band‐pass filter in the spectral domain. The properties of this operator can be handled by means of several parameters that act to separate the information about field sources at different depth levels. In this contribution, we describe the development of the method from its very beginning (based mostly on qualitative interpretation of simple total normalized gradient sections) through to more recent numerical improvements to the method. These improvements include the quasi‐singular points method, which refines the filter properties of the total normalized gradient operator and defines an objective criteria (so called criterion 'α' and 'Г') for the definition of source depths in the section. We end by describing possibilities for further development of the method in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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ABSTRACT Igneous intrusions, notably carbonatitic-alkalic intrusions, peralkaline intrusions, and pegmatites, represent significant sources of rare-earth metals. Geophysical exploration for and of such intrusions has met with considerable success. Examples of the application of the gravity, magnetic, and radiometric methods in the search for rare metals are presented and described. Ground gravity surveys defining small positive gravity anomalies helped outline the shape and depth of the Nechalacho (formerly Lake) deposit within the Blatchford Lake alkaline complex, Northwest Territories, and of spodumene-rich mineralization associated with the Tanco deposit, Manitoba, within the hosting Tanco pegmatite. Based on density considerations, the bastnaesite-bearing main ore body within the Mountain Pass carbonatite, California, should produce a gravity high similar in amplitude to those associated with the Nechalacho and Tanco deposits. Gravity also has utility in modelling hosting carbonatite intrusions, such as the Mount Weld intrusion, Western Australia, and Elk Creek intrusion, Nebraska. The magnetic method is probably the most successful geophysical technique for locating carbonatitic-alkalic host intrusions, which are typically characterized by intense positive, circular to sub-circular, crescentic, or annular anomalies. Intrusions found by this technique include the Mount Weld carbonatite and the Misery Lake alkali complex, Quebec. Two potential carbonatitic-alkalic intrusions are proposed in the Grenville Province of Eastern Quebec, where application of an automatic technique to locate circular magnetic anomalies identified several examples. Two in particular displayed strong similarities in magnetic pattern to anomalies accompanying known carbonatitic or alkalic intrusions hosting rare-metal mineralization and are proposed to have a similar origin. Discovery of carbonatitic-alkalic hosts of rare metals has also been achieved by the radiometric method. The Thor Lake group of rare-earth metal deposits, which includes the Nechalacho deposit, were found by follow-up investigations of strong equivalent thorium and uranium peaks defined by an airborne survey. Prominent linear radiometric anomalies associated with glacial till in the Canadian Shield have provided vectors based on ice flow directions to source intrusions. The Allan Lake carbonatite in the Grenville Province of Ontario is one such intrusion found by this method. Although not discovered by its radiometric characteristics, the Strange Lake alkali intrusion on the Quebec-Labrador border is associated with prominent linear thorium and uranium anomalies extending at least 50 km down ice from the intrusion. Radiometric exploration of rare metals hosted by pegmatites is evaluated through examination of radiometric signatures of peraluminous pegmatitic granites in the area of the Tanco pegmatite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is the outline of an argument of a public administrationist pleading fo r closer attention to the letter of law in order tofurther a better society in South Africa in 2015. The virtue of adherence to the letter of law is expounded. The article does not advocate attention to the letter of the law, as opposed to the spirit of the law, as a universal ideal, but argues for this in a specific context. It goes against the grain of current thinking in Public Administration, which promotes flexible, innovative and enterprising behaviour in public officials. The logical structure of the article consists of: a societal analysis, including the identification of competences that may be lacking in our time; a discussion of discourses dealing with the question of abiding by the letter and the spirit of the law and how this pertains to the South African Constitution; an analysis of the conditions of literalness and of its dangers; a discussion of the importance of writing and reading; andfinally a suggestion on how unsuitable prescriptions should be treated by the state. The conceptual distinction made by the 19th-century sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies between community (Gemeinschaft) and civil society (Gesellschaft) is used to emphasise the need for formal regulation in a social situation such as the South Africa of our times. Because South Africa as a state is a Gesellschaft, one should face this fact and not treat it as if it were a Gemeinschaft. When lawlessness reigns the Gesellschaft may collapse. Laws and other rules make living together as a society possible. That means we ought to see ourselves as members of the group to which the legislation concerned applies. The article also briefly touches on the functions and advantages of administrative rule-making. Writing is of special importance in this regard. We cannot do without it. Written law affords the tyrant less protection than oral law. Written law promotes democratic transparency, provided it is drafted in language ordinary people can understand. In the long run the content of what was agreed upon in, for example, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, will become more important than the activities of elites that resulted in the adoption of the text. The letter of the law is defined as that which is in writing as opposed to that which is not written. The opposition of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law is not simple, since the spirit of the law can also be written down. It is conceded that the letter of the law may have to be interpreted, but ideally by using other letters in the form of written guidelines. The need for interpretation is illustrated by means of section 217 of the Constitution, 1996, which deals with public procurement. The interpretation of this section has not been dealt with definitively because it contains general principles, but the interpretation is the interpretation of the letters in that section. The ability to submit oneself to the written letter of the law (and other written prescripts such as the rules of a game, road signs, musical scores and contracts) is an achievement of our civilisation and is heavily influenced by the three great religions of the book. The skills of focussed reading and fine interpretation shoidd be valued. The Constitution, 1996 is not treated literally enough in our society. Issues such as transformation that are not explicitly defined or provided for in the Constitution are treated as if they were the point of the document, whereas an issue such as equality, which is explicitly provided for, does not get the attention it shoidd. The unwritten spirit of the Constitution, which is so often invoked, does not exist as a unitary canon of interpretation, because the Constitution is the result of contestation. The spirit underlying constitutional provisions may be controlled too easily by the powerful if it has not been reduced to writing. The role of writing and reading in the rule of law is discussed. When regulations are made by the executive, or policy is applied by street level bureaucrats, policy divergence can occur. Staying true to the letter of the law under such circumstances requires special skills and intelligence. Not every letter of the law should be obeyed. Legislation can be unconstitutional or patently unjust. They should not blindly be adhered to. Provisions that are not acceptable but still legal ought to be obeyed. They should be amended, not by an incremental process of gradual neglect and disobedience, but by processes of formal revision within a model that can be described as punctuated equilibrium. Temporary obedience to ill-conceived rules is a cost of democracy and civilization. The article ends with a suggestion that we may be obedient to the wrong things today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ireland and the UK it is accepted practice that agencies with formal responsibility for delivering school examinations allow examination candidates, and in many cases their teachers, to see their examination papers once they have been marked. Returned papers can carry various pieces of information; as well as the total score given for a performance, additional information is included in the form of the annotations left on the examination paper by the marking examiner. As far as we know there has been no research into how this information affects those who come into contact with it. The study uses teacher interview and survey data to explore whether a sociocultural approach to analysis can illuminate the factors that might influence their interpretation of those annotations. These analyses suggest that a key influence on the valid interpretation of an examiner's annotations is a teachers' involvement in examining activity. The analyses support further conceptualisation that these teacher-examiners' interpretative capacity is related to their positioning in a boundary zone between two different activity systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the different notions of completeness applied in the EPR discussion following and amending the thorough analysis of Arthur Fine. To this aim, we propose a classification scheme for scientific theories that provides a methodology for analyzing the different levels at which interpretive approaches come into play. This allows us to contrast several concepts of completeness that operate on specific levels of the theory. We introduce the notion of theory completeness and compare it with the established notions of Born completeness, Schrödinger completeness and bijective completeness. We relate these notions to the recent concept of ψ -completeness and predictable completeness. The paper shows that the EPR argument contains conflicting versions of completeness. The confusion of these notions led to misunderstandings in the EPR debate and hindered its progress. Their clarification will thus contribute to recent debates on interpretational issues of quantum mechanics. Finally, we discuss the connection between the EPR paper and the Einstein–Rosen paper with regard to the question of completeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]