Aspects Of Modality Research Articles

David Lewis Meets Hamilton and Jacobi

I commemorate David Lewis by discussing an aspect of modality within analytical mechanics, which is closely related to his work on counterfactuals. This concerns the way Hamilton-Jacobi theory uses ensembles, i.e. sets of possible initial conditions. (A companion paper discusses other aspects of modality in analytical mechanics that are equally related to Lewis's work.)

Self-Management of Oral Anticoagulant Therapy: A Review

Patient self-management of oral anticoagulant therapy has over the last years gained increasing attention and widespread use. The method implies self-testing using a coagulometer (point-of-care device) and self-dosaging of coumarin. The method entails advantages for selected patients, who do not need to go to the hospital or family doctor for blood specimen and drug dosage adjustment. In contrast to patients on conventional management, patients performing self-managing have a reduced binding to the health care system, and it allows these patients unhindered to travel and manage their job or school. Therefore, the patients have a high degree of compliance because they are highly motivated. This has been the main justification for patient self-management. Furthermore, the conducted trials have also indicated a better quality of treatment compared to conventional management. In this paper the different aspects of this new treatment modality are critically reviewed, with special focus on the published clinical studies and the evaluation of the used coagulometers.

Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas (review)

Reviewed by: Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas Rita Ottens Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas, by François Lilienfeld. Zürich: Chronos, 2002. 178 pp., compact disc. fi29.90. In present-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the discourse around the field of Yiddish music and Yiddish music research has become one of ethnicity and race. At a time when the role of Jews in Germany is marginalized—yet expected to be drawn upon [End Page 173] whenever needed as part of the constituting of the new German Self—it is “Jewish” music that fills the space. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially the music of the main targets of the German Endlösung, the Eastern European Jews, has been turned into a ritualistic remedy, and is celebrated in festivals and concert series throughout the country. It is the milieu of this, the “Music of the Jews of Eastern Europe,” that François Lilienfeld has set out to “describe more thoroughly.” His “greatest intention,” however, is “to show that synagogue music, Yiddish folksong and klezmer music represent three facets of one culture, three elements which are inseparably interconnected” (p. 7). The book contains sections on these three musical genres as well as chapters on hasidic music, the Yiddish language, Yiddish theater, and Yiddish film. In addition, it includes an annotated bibliography and discography, illustrations, and notated musical examples, as well as a compact disc. The book does not, however, as it proclaims, deliver a “more thorough” understanding of the colorful tapestry of Eastern European Jewish musical traditions. That topic is broader than any one volume could encompass thoroughly, as recent publications by Moshe Beregovski (2000 Moshe Beregovski (2001), Philip V. Bohlman and Otto Holzapfel (2001), Ellen Koskoff (2000), Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin (1999 Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin (2001), Kay Kaufman Shelemay (2001) and Mark Slobin (2000 and Mark Slobin (2002) have shown. Lilienfeld’s uncritical use of sources of varying approaches, reliability, and quality, as well as his inability to interpret and draw his own conclusions from these materials, leads to a confused depiction of the musical cultures that he set out to describe. What makes all of this even worse is the obvious attitude of the author that anything goes, as long as it fits into his world view. Especially after listening to the enclosed CD, one must come to the conclusion that the production was mainly undertaken for the purpose of self-promotion. The compact disc promises to give an “impression in sound of the described music” (cover text), but fails to do just that. Instead, the author offers the listener a cantillation in the German (not Eastern European) ritus—sung by himself shortly after his bar mitzvah—following on the heels of the voices of the famous early twentieth-century Eastern European cantors Rosenblatt, Sirota, and Pinkasowicz. Of the eighteen tracks on the CD, an additional five comprise interpretations by Lilienfeld himself, including two compositions in the German ritus by Louis Lewandowski, as well as a pseudo-hasidic piece with “ecstatic” oy-oy-oys written by the author himself. These illustrate acoustically Lilienfeld’s doubtful connection to Yiddish music, language, and culture, an impression which is also given by the text itself. For example, the complex, several-centuries-old modes of expression in Eastern European Jewish music are reduced to three, seven-tone “Jewish” scales (p. 142). What it is that makes this music “Jewish” or, more specifically, “Yiddish,” Lilienfeld is not able to explain. He fails to mention that all three scales are shared with surrounding ethnicities in Eastern Europe as well as those of the Middle East, and are of unknown provenance. Such reductionisms unfortunately [End Page 174] don’t give the reader any information on the typical melodic turns of phrase or ornamentation patterns associated with those scales—precisely the modal aspects which could be interpreted as “Yiddish.” In general, it can be said that Lilienfeld relies too heavily on outdated and second-hand general sources such as Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1929/1992) and Aron Marko Rothmüller (1960), despite the relative plethora of writings on Eastern European Jewish music published in the past two...

Mood and modality: out of theory and into the fray

The topic of mood and modality (MOD) is a difficult aspect of language description because, among other reasons, the inventory of modal meanings is not stable across languages, moods do not map neatly from one language to another, modality may be realised morphologically or by free-standing words, and modality interacts in complex ways with other modules of the grammar, like tense and aspect. Describing MOD is especially difficult if one attempts to develop a unified approach that not only provides cross-linguistic coverage, but is also useful in practical natural language processing systems. This article discusses an approach to MOD that was developed for and implemented in the Boas Knowledge-Elicitation (KE) system. Boas elicits knowledge about any language, L, from an informant who need not be a trained linguist. That knowledge then serves as the static resources for an L-to-English translation system. The KE methodology used throughout Boas is driven by a resident inventory of parameters, value sets, and means of their realisation for a wide range of language phenomena. MOD is one of those parameters, whose values are the inventory of attested and not yet attested moods (e.g. indicative, conditional, imperative), and whose realisations include flective morphology, agglutinating morphology, isolating morphology, words, phrases and constructions. Developing the MOD elicitation procedures for Boas amounted to wedding the extensive theoretical and descriptive research on MOD with practical approaches to guiding an untrained informant through this non-trivial task. We believe that our experience in building the MOD module of Boas offers insights not only into cross-linguistic aspects of MOD that have not previously been detailed in the natural language processing literature, but also into KE methodologies that could be applied more broadly.

‘ASPECTS’ AND ‘FUNCTIONS’ OF INDIVIDUAL THINGS

'Modal aspect’ is a central notion in so-called ‘Calvinistic Philosophy’ (henceforth referred to as CP1). To be sure, this is true of only one of its versions, namely Dooyeweerd’s. For Vollenhoven’s systematic philosophy, which of course may also lay claim on the title CP, has no use for it. In his version pride of place is given to the notion of ‘function’. This paper is a meditation on the question what ‘aspects’ and ‘functions’, within the bounds of CP, are supposed to be. Doing so will shed, I hope, at least some light on the question which, if any, of the two is the more intelligible and useful notion. Right at the beginning I should like to make it clear that this paper is narrowly focussed on the indicated questions. My aim is not to discuss any theory about modal aspects, such as Dooyeweerd’s theory that modal aspects are refractions in time of something supra temporal, or his theory that there is an Archimedian Point from which human beings can overlook the various modal aspects. Nor will I discuss any theory about functions. The indicated questions seek to establish what the phenomena are that such theories are about. This paper is also narrowly focussed in that whatever differences may turn out to exist in the course of this meditation between Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd, it will not discuss them in any depth. A serious discussion of these differences will have to take into account the theories that I propose presently not to deal with. Let me now turn to the first question.

ON AESTHETICALLY QUALIFIED CHARACTERS AND THEIR MUTUAL INTERLACEMENTS

Discussions about the aesthetic relation frame (or modal aspect) are often focused on subject-object relations, on objects of arts, their production and their perception.1 A Christian philosophical anthropology emphasizes human subject-subject relations and human acts, including more than the production of artefacts. According to the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea, any kind of human act has an aesthetic aspect. Yet, I shall restrict myself to types of characters (or structures of individuality) that are aesthetically qualified. I shall discuss (1) characters of acts, which objects are not typically aesthetic; (2) characters of acts, which objects are aesthetically qualified; (3) characters of acts performed in subject-subject relations, and (4) characters of aesthetically qualified associations.

A note on modality in French

This paper deals with certain lexicogrammatical, rather than the more commonly treated semantic, aspects of modality in French. The realization of modal meaning in French covers more or less the same range of resources as English, with the exception that where English has an auxiliary + verb construction, French does not, and uses rather a verb + infinitive construction. French grammars usually call the finite verb in this construction a “semi-auxiliary”. The remarks in this paper relate specifically to pouvoir and devoir. Formally similar constructions in English are frequently dealt with in terms of phase; however, the concept of phase, in terms of a complex verb phrase which realizes a single process, is open to question. An alternative solution is to treat the infinitive as the verb of a rankshifted infinitive clause. This can be applied to clauses with pouvoir and devoir in French, but raises the question of the transitivity status of such clauses. The suggestion is made that they encode a form of relational process. This solution might be seen not as a replacement for more traditional analyses, but as an alternative co-existing in a relationship of relativity with them.

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine perspectives for complementary and alternative medicine research in cardiovascular diseases.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) was established in 1998 by the US Congress to conduct and support basic and applied research and research training and disseminate information with respect to identifying, investigating, and validating complementary and alternative therapies. Because of limited appropriations, NCCAM prioritizes its research programs according to the relative use of a modality, the evidence supporting its value and safety, and opportunities to advance the relevant fields of science. While NCCAM's top priority is supporting clinical trials of alternative therapeutics, increasingly it is supporting basic and preclinical research. To accomplish its mission, NCCAM encourages the research community to undertake high-quality and rigorous research in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In the area of cardiovascular diseases, NCCAM is supporting clinical trials, specialized centers, research training, and investigator-initiated projects. Virtually all aspects of CAM modalities are open for investigation. Current NCCAM projects are investigating Tai Chi (Taiji) exercise, hawthorn, phytoestrogens, biofeedback, Ayurvedic herbals, acupuncture, qigong, Reiki, meditation, spirituality, Ginkgo biloba, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid chelation therapy, and special diets.

Complex regional pain syndrome I (reflex sympathetic dystrophy).

Complex regional pain syndrome I (reflex sympathetic dystrophy).

ENERGY TRANSFER FOR HIGH FREQUENCIES IN BUILT-UP STRUCTURES

This paper is concerned with the prediction of vibrations at high frequencies in built-up structures. In the high-frequency range, the dynamical behaviour of structures is driven by energy transfer rather than modal aspects. The description of systems in terms of energy is thus well-suited and leads to closed-form equations of an integral type on energy variables. The numerical solution of these equations is achieved with appropriate software called CeReS, and the results are compared with experimental measurements on a multi-plate structure.

Inter‐firm sharing of process knowledge: exploring knowledge markets

AbstractMarkets and communities are two modalities of knowledge exchange between firms; and this study concludes with a model that addresses the tension between the two modalities. The model resulted from an exploratory study conducted under the umbrella of a national consortium, using the methodology of participatory action research. The study involved three large multinational firms, where one firm supplied knowledge of three different processes used in product development to two other non‐competitive firms outside their supply chain. The knowledge was shared within the framework of an intervention that included the following: (1) individual work with process‐related course materials via the web or compact disc, followed by (2) interactive group sessions supported by videoconference facilities and led by a process expert from the supplying firm. Empirical data were gathered by interviewing participants before and after the intervention, and by observing interactive group sessions. Findings from the empirical data describe rationales for inter‐firm sharing of process knowledge, which illustrate a market modality of exchange; and describe practices for effective knowledge sharing, which illustrate aspects of a community modality of exchange. The model induced from these findings compares the situational setting, constellation of meanings and associated knowledge sharing practices for both modalities of exchange: market and community. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Aspects of Modality in Russian Songs of Northern Lake Onega, North-west Russia

Aspects of Modality in Russian Songs of Northern Lake Onega, North-west Russia

Computer-Guided Surgery Utilizing a Computer-Milled Surgical Template

Computer-Guided Surgery Utilizing a Computer-Milled Surgical Template

Review article: current endoscopic therapeutic options in the management of variceal bleeding.

Variceal bleeding is a frequent and life-threatening complication of portal hypertension. The first episode of variceal bleeding is not only associated with a high mortality, but also with a high recurrence rate in those who survive. Therefore, many studies and randomized clinical trials have focused on different therapeutic strategies aiming to prevent the first episode of variceal bleeding (primary prophylaxis), to control haemorrhage during the acute bleeding episode (emergency treatment), and to prevent re-bleeding (secondary prophylaxis). These strategies involve pharmacological, endoscopic, surgical, and interventional radiological modalities. This review concentrates on the clinical aspects of the endoscopic modalities used to treat oesophageal variceal haemorrhage, including variceal injection sclerotherapy, variceal band ligation, and the use of tissue adhesives (glue) and their substitutes. We also draw conclusions from the available literature regarding the use of endoscopic modalities in primary prophylaxis, emergency treatment, and secondary prophylaxis of variceal re-bleeding. The management of gastric varices and variceal bleeding during pregnancy is also addressed.

Modal analysis of corticothalamic dynamics, electroencephalographic spectra, and evoked potentials.

The effects of cortical boundary conditions and resulting modal aspects of continuum corticothalamic electrodynamics are explored, including feedbacks. Dispersion relations, electroencephalographic spectra, and stimulus response functions are calculated from the underlying physiology, and the effects of discrete mode structure are determined. Conditions under which modal effects are important are obtained, along with estimates of the point at which modal series can be truncated, and the limit in which only a single globally uniform mode need be retained. It is found that for physiologically plausible parameters only the lowest cortical spatial eigenmode together with the set of next-lowest modes can produce distinct modal structure in spectra and response functions, and then only at frequencies where corticothalamic resonances reduce dissipation to the point where the spatial eigenmodes are weakly damped. The continuum limit is found to be a good approximation, except at very low frequencies and, under some circumstances, near the alpha resonance. It is argued that the major electroencephalographic rhythms result from corticothalamic feedback resonances, but that cortical modal effects can contribute to weak substructure in the alpha resonance. This mechanism is compared and contrasted with purely cortical and pacemaker-based alternatives and testable predictions are formulated to enable experimental discrimination between these possibilities.

“What bees to be maun be”

Irish-English (IrE) as a contact vernacular permits tense, mood and aspect categories to be marked in a manner which distinguishes this variety from all other world Englishes. Researchers, however, have been preoccupied with its distinctive tense and aspect markers and much less is known about the manner in which IrE modal relations are expressed. This paper attempts to redress the imbalance by comparing aspects of modality in IrE and other English varieties and by introducing a morphosyntactic syntagm termed “modal be+to” which can be used to express both deontic and epistemic modality. The marker is frequent in Northern Irish Englishes and a detailed account of its use in the South Armagh vernacular is offered here. In addition, attention will be given to locating the potential sources of be+to as the product of a language contact situation.

Challenges for Higher Education: Teaching the Cognitive Social Bases of Language

AbstractProfessionals in higher education are perfectly situated to reshape the field of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders in accordance with many substantive advancements in the cognitive socialization literature. This article provides a four-level model of the cognitive social bases of language, and it includes a discussion of four substantive issues toward improved clinical services. The topics include (a) the modality and core aspects of language; (b) the centrality of intent; (c) the lack of construct validity of language tests; and (d) the heterogeneous nature of clinical populations.

Dooyweerd on Law and Morality: Legal Ethics - A Test Case

The philosophical work of the Dutch Christian intellectual Hernum Dooyeweerd is notinternationally well known. His major jurisprudential work is even less well known owing to the fact that it has not been published either in his native language or in English. The author of this article, who is involved in the editing of the English translation of Dooyeweerd's jurisprudence for publication, briefly expounds the main themes and some of the basic concepts of his legal philosophy with reference to the general problem of the relationship between law and morality and then attempts to apply these insights towards a theoretical elucidation of the relationship between law and legal ethics. Central to the Dooyeweerdian jurisprudential perspective is a highly original theory of the modal aspects. ln particular, the notions of the jural and ethical aspects provide the baszs of his unique account of the relationshzp between law and morality and of this article's application of Dooyeweerd's theoretical framework to the topic of legal ethics.

Comments on Anticipations

Anticipating a future theory of change, this paper comments on the phenomenon of anticipations in Dooyeweerd’s systematic philosophy. The idea that reality itself or human experience of reality has some kind of a layered structure is put forward by several philosophers, but the insight that each aspect refers intimately to the others is uniquely Dooyeweerdian. It concerns an essential property of the structure of the modal aspects, each of which displays a ‘meaning nucleus’, expressive of its original meaning, besides retrocipations and anticipations, referring to the other aspects. Dooyeweerd assigns the aspects a linear temporal order, hence the distinction between retroand anticipations. In fact, each aspect is considered to be an aspect of time as well as an aspect of being, a mode of human experience, and a principle of scientific explanation.

Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye

Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye Jerry Aline Flieger (bio) This paper deals with the relation between paranoia and postmodernism, in both fiction and theory, in at least three registers: thematic, structural, and transferential (referring to the transactional nature of the reading process). This continuum in turn opens to a fourth realm—the domain of the social, widely construed, which is the context most germane to the discussion on East/West cultural studies in which we are engaged here. The transparency of our information-saturated global monad, in the age of instantaneous “contact” and access, doubtless confers a paranoid modality to “postmodern” life, giving us the feeling that we are watched everywhere, monitored and transcribed by a ubiquitous information bank. Much postmodern writing reflects this feeling of being under the gaze of an anonymous surveillance—the sense that the ever growing database which catalogues us all has its eye on us, tracking our social and economic history, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes to facilitate the new economic or cultural order (as in the credit rating system in the West). Given the concerns of this age, which Teresa Brennan has termed “the age of paranoia,” a raging debate continues to take place concerning the ramifications of this postmodern condition. 1 Is it a bleak or even psychotic moment, leading to the effacement of the individual and the diminution of social contact? Or is it rather an expansion and recasting of the definition and the possibilities of the social in the global information age? Does it increase contact with otherness—in the spirit of the East/West encounter fostered by the exchange of essays in this volume—or does it efface otherness in a culture of the virtual and the instantaneous, leading to a diminution of productive difference (the meeting, as Terry Eagleton puts it, of Mao with McDonald’s)? In other words, what is the status of the global—to use a familiar postmodern marker—and is it conducive to cultural cross-pollination which would go beyond mere commercial exoticism (Thai restaurants in Tucson) or does it disseminate an epidemic of sameness, a culture free of ethics, obedient only to the demands of performance? I would like to suggest that part of the answer depends on how we define the concept “paranoid,” as a clinical psychosis, in Freud’s sense, or as an episteme, a (postmodern) mode of knowledge. I focus here on [End Page 87] a particular aspect of paranoid modality, its relation to the specular and the visible, and hence its relation to the Lacanian Imaginary mode, as adumbrated in his concept of the mirror stage in human development. For paranoia may be considered an imaginary construct, in Lacan’s sense of the term, because of its etiology: it stems from a fixation, as Freud tells us, in the narcissistic state, and is characterized by the overtones of specular identification implied in narcissistic imaginary constructs like projection. In fact, postmodern paranoia may be considered a special case of the specular imaginary—which Jean Baudrillard has called “hypervisibility”—the preeminence of the virtual in the millennial era, accompanied by an increasing blindness to the real material conditions that ground us. 2 But I want to ask here—expanding on Lacan’s topography of the human psyche—if this postmodern hyperimaginary of the virtual might not be countered by something like a postmodern hypersymbolic, a symbolic of the sublime (as Lyotard, among others, suggests), depending, in Lyotard’s words “on the presentation that the unpresentable exists,” and on the persistence of matter itself, in a face-off with the virtual and the technological. 3 (Even in our cyber-lives, the computer “goes down” for maintenance, the disk fails, the real cables are disrupted.) This obdurate quality of the object and of matter reminds us of the ineluctability of the real, its intrusion even into the ether of cyberspace. Against the naysayers of postmodernism and “post-culture,” I would like to ask what an engaged postmodern subject might be, if not a soporific video consumer, mesmerized in front of a monitor? Engaged in anticipatory thinking and projection vis-à-vis the Other, the world and its objects, this subject would not merely be reduced...