Triadic Pattern Research Articles

Pendekatan Hermeneutika Negosiatif-Otoritatif Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority, and Women Pemikiran Khaled M Abou El Fadl

This study discusses how Khaled Abou El Fadl thinks in interpreting religious texts, namely the Qur'an and Hadith. In this case, it is done to be able to understand a religious text which is done by means of negotiation between the text, the writer, and the reader. This research uses a qualitative descriptive method, with library research as the type of this research. The data and data sources were taken from books, journals, and the works of Khaled Abou El Fadl. The documentation method is used as a data collection method, while for data analysis using content analysis. In.this.study, it can.be.seen.the results of Khaled Abou El.Fadl's hermeneutical interpretation of a religious text, namely the Qur'an and Hadith. This can determine the form of interpretation by negotiating between the text (text), author (author), and reader (reader) with a triadic pattern, namely an equilateral triangle, so that all posts have the same portion. Khaled's thought in the interpretation of this text is a renewal to be able to understand the text of the Qur'an and Hadith as the object of this interpretation.

The Expressive Use of Adjectives in Metropolitan Anthony Bloom’s Religious Discourse

An overwhelming personality of the 20th century, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom was the spiritual head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain (1948-2003) who really raised the British people’s awareness of what Orthodoxy meant. He provided the realm of religious discourse with a particular outlook on Christianity (mainly sprung from his own revelation of the risen Christ), which he expressed in a perfectly natural and unsophisticated manner. Interestingly enough, Anthony Bloom and C. S. Lewis can be viewed as “kindred spirits”, as not only did they embrace Christianity after being non-believers, but their writing styles are also similar in that “both have an uncanny ability to explain difficult concepts with simple and engaging language” (“Beginning to Pray (A. Bloom)” [book review]). In Metropolitan Anthony’s view, Christian life represents the personal encounter with God. His discourse is in fact a place of encounters; it is where Eastern Orthodoxy meets Western spirituality, where the sacred realm meets the secular realm and, perhaps most importantly, where the metropolitan’s inner world meaningfully interacts with his addressees’ spiritual searches. We hereby examine the ways in which adjectives contribute to creating an image of a particular world in the following books: Living Prayer (1999a), School for Prayer (1999b), Meditations on a Theme: A spiritual journey (2003). Our approach relies on the Jakobsonian model (1960/1987) of language functions, Kinneavy’s (1980) Theory of Discourse, van Eemeren’s (2002) pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and various studies on religious discourse. The current paper reveals such discourse constants as the triadic pattern of adjectival constructions, the abundant use of the adjectives “real” and “true”, as well as the presence of adjectives in parallelism and repetition. All these expressive uses of adjectives contribute to the creation of a complex network in which the world of the Gospel, the discursive ethos (conveying the author’s attitude in its diversity) and the reader’s image intermingle in a most harmonious manner.

Building blocks of communication networks in times of crises: Emotion-exchange motifs

In this paper, we discuss how emotional messages sent during crisis events shape the communication patterns on Twitter. To this end, we analyzed a data-set consisting of 23.3 million tweets that have been sent during eighteen different crisis events in ten different countries. In particular, we use the novel concept of emotion-exchange motifs to uncover the elementary building blocks of complex emotion-exchange networks. Our results show that not all negative emotions are exchanged in the same way, nor do they result in the same communication structures. For example, we found that there is a specific set of emotions which are sent in response to messages including sadness and disgust (e.g., sadness attracts joy/love, while disgust attracts anger). The exchange of fear, on the other hand, is highly representative for its reciprocity and is highly associated with an information seeking behavior. We also found that the expression of positivity is characteristic for the emergence of a cyclic triad communication pattern. In contrast, the exchange of negative emotions is characteristic for a triadic communication structure that not only shows a broadcasting behavior but also reciprocity. Compared to single-emotion exchanges within a triadic pattern, the exchange of a mixture of emotions leads to more complex communication structures.

Investigating Preschool Teachers’ In-Class Patterns of Interactions: Classroom Discourse Analysis Approach

Bu çalışma iki okul öncesi öğretmeninin sınıf içi öğretimlerinde ortaya çıkan etkileşim örüntülerinin incelenmesini amaçlamaktadır. Etkileşim örüntüleri üçlü bir diyalog yapısı ile gözlemlenebilir. Öğretmen bir soru ile diyaloğu başlatır, öğrenciden öğretmen sorusuna cevap sağlanır ve öğretmen verilen cevabın doğru/makul olup olmadığına karar verebilir, ya da cevabı genişleten/değiştiren ek açıklamalar yapabilir ya da cevapla ilgili başka bir soru sorabilir. Durum çalışması olarak tasarlanan bu araştırmanın katılımcılarını iki okul öncesi öğretmeni ve 52 okul öncesi öğrencisidir. Çalışmanın veri setini sınıf içi uygulamaların video kayıtları (n = 17, 302 dakika) oluşturmaktadır. Öğretmenler, araştırmacılar tarafından tasarlanan ve sınıf içi diyaloglara imkân sağlayan hikayeleştirilmiş ikilemleri öğrencileri ile tartışmışlardır. Öğretmenlerin söylemleri sosyokültürel söylem analizinin bir kolu olan sistematik gözlem yöntemi ile analiz edilmiştir. Sistematik gözlemlerde analiz birimi öğretmenlerin cümleleridir. Her bir öğretmen cümlesi hem teori hem de veri temelli olarak bu çalışma kapsamında geliştirilen Üçlü Etkileşim Örüntüsü Kodlama Kataloğu aracılığı ile kodlanmıştır. Öğretmenlerin üç farklı tipte etkileşim örüntüsünü farklı frekanslarla sergilediği görülmüştür: Başlat-Cevapla-Değerlendir (BCD), Başlat-Cevapla-Açıkla (BCA) ve Başlat-Cevapla-Takip Sorusu (BCT). Öğretmenlerin sıklıkla takip sorularını kullandığı (BCT) ve aynı zamanda sınıf söyleminde olgu ve durumları açıklayıcı (BCA) ya da öğrenci ifadelerini değerlendirici (BCD) söylemler sergilediği de belirlenmiştir. Ek olarak, öğretmenlerin diyaloglar esnasında hangi tür konuşma ikilisini; T-S (öğretmen-öğrenci) ve/veya S-S (öğrenci-öğrenci), tercih ettiği belirlenmiştir. Her iki öğretmenin de sınıf söylemine yoğun müdahalelerinin olduğu ve öğrenci – öğrenci arasında yaşanan diyalogların kısıtlı olduğu görülmüştür. Elde edilen bulgular doğrultusunda öğretmenlerin sınıf içi konuşmalarında oluşan ve entelektüel çıktıları etkileyebilen etkileşim örüntülerine yönelik bilinçli pedagojik-söylemsel farkındalığının geliştirilmesi için çeşitli önerilerde bulunulmuştur.

Focalization as Transmedial Category

In the last decades formalistic and structuralist narratology has been intensively recovered and reinterpreted in a cognitive perspective, and with a new focus on transmedial dissemination. The goal is, as Marie-Laure Ryan and Jean-Noel Thon state, a media-conscious narratology. In particular focalization appears to be a crucial category to define the various narrative techniques through different media. The paper will deal first with the theoretical debate on focalization, analyzing the shift from Genette’s canonical triadic pattern to the more fluid scale proposed by cognitive narratology (for example by Manfred Jahn), and the coexistence between different meanings and applications (basically: perceptual, emotional, informational). The second part will be devoted to some significant examples: the iconographic motif of the character (usually a woman) at the window; Alfonso Cuaron’s recent movie Roma, as a vivid example of central focus in cinema; focalization in videogames; and the 360° multifocalization practiced by new media, which radically change the notion of point of view itself. In the last decades formalistic and structuralist narratology has been intensively recovered and reinterpreted in a cognitive perspective, and with a new focus on transmedial dissemination. The goal is, as Marie-Laure Ryan and Jean-Noel Thon state, a media-conscious narratology. In particular focalization appears to be a crucial category to define the various narrative techniques through different media. The paper will deal first with the theoretical debate on focalization, analyzing the shift from Genette’s canonical triadic pattern to the more fluid scale proposed by cognitive narratology (for example by Manfred Jahn), and the coexistence between different meanings and applications (basically: perceptual, emotional, informational). The second part will be devoted to some significant examples: the iconographic motif of the character (usually a woman) at the window; Alfonso Cuaron’s recent movie Roma, as a vivid example of central focus in cinema; focalization in videogames; and the 360° multifocalization practiced by new media, which radically change the notion of point of view itself.

Lex secundum quam disponuntur omnia: Trichotomic Trees in Jan AmosKomenský’s Pansophical Metaphysics and Metaphorics

The goal of this article is to detail the opposition to “Ramean tree” dichotomic divisions which emerged in the age of swelling Antitrinitarianism, especially Socinianism. Scholars such as Bartholomaeus Keckermann, Jan Amos Komenský and Richard Baxter made a point of preferring the trichotomic to the dichotomic division of Petrus Ramus and the Ramist tradition. This paper tracks the origin of Komenský’s “universal triadism” as present in his book metaphorics and in his metaphysics. Komenský’s triadic book metaphorics (the notion of nature, human mind and Scripture as “the triple book of God”) has its source in late sixteenth-century Lutheran mysticism and theosophy, mediated perhaps by Heinrich Khunrath and, above all, by Johann Heinrich Alsted. Komenský’s metaphysics follows the same triadic pattern. What is more, Komenský illustrates both these domains by means of Ramist-like bracketed trees; regarding book metaphorics, clearly his sources are Khunrath and Alsted. Although inspirations from Lullus, Sabundus and Nicholas of Cusa are most probably involved, the crucial role has to be ascribed to the influence of Lutheran mysticism and Alsted’s “Lullo-Ramism.”

Emergence and Development of a Dialogic Whole-class Discussion Genre

Prior research across disciplines has established the value of dialogic, whole-class discussions. Previous studies have often defined discussions in opposition to the notorious triadic pattern called recitation, or IRE/F, focusing on variations to the teacher’s initiating question or evaluative follow-up on students’ responses. Recent scholarship has also identified variations on recitations and dialogic discussions that suggest these categories might be flexible, containing types of interaction associated with particular contexts. However, research remains to be done on how such types, or genres, of dialogic, whole-class discussion emerge and develop over time. In this article, I take up this line of inquiry, analyzing the classroom discourse of five lesson excerpts generated by a prospective teacher and his students in a US secondary History classroom between October and March. I illustrate how, over time, teacher and students repeatedly renegotiated the nature of a recitation-style textbook review activity using similar patterns of language that suggested an emergent discourse genre. These five interactions did not all lead to dialogic, whole-class discussions; I explain their relative success or failure in terms of how they constructed participants’ relationships to historical and classroom events. I argue that even failed attempts at generating dialogic discourse may be part of a developing genre.

The Romantic Idea of the Golden Age in Friedrich Schlegel's Philosophy of History by Asko Nivala

Reviewed by: The Romantic Idea of the Golden Age in Friedrich Schlegel's Philosophy of History by Asko Nivala Thomas L. Cooksey, emeritus Asko Nivala. The Romantic Idea of the Golden Age in Friedrich Schlegel's Philosophy of History. New York: Routledge, 2017. viii + 273 pp. Friedrich Schlegel is commonly identified as a writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. Though much of his work focused on Greek and Latin classics, Schlegel thought of himself as a historian, engaged in what he characterized as Kulturgeschichte (though admittedly not in the modern sense of the term). Inspired by Hesiod and the book of Genesis, many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century models of history followed a triadic pattern, positing a problematic present as a fallen or undesirable age, between an idyllic primitive Golden Age in the past, and the possibility of a utopian Golden Age in the future. Asko Nivala challenges the commonly held reading that Schlegel and the Romantics believed that a Golden Age had any basis in history. He further proposes to complicate the view that Romanticism be understood in terms of a nostalgic yearning for such a lost Golden Age. Rather it is a fluid trope that allowed Schlegel to critique the cultural present. Schlegel's "Romanticism" here refers to the historical period in German cultural history at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, intertwined with the final stages of the Enlightenment. Its early proponents include the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Tieck, Schleiermacher, Dorothea Veit and Caroline Schlegel. This book focuses on Schlegel's early writings, literary fragments, and letters until his conservative turn and conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1808. Nivala, a cultural historian and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, teases out and drills down into Schlegel's complex and shifting treatment of the conception of a Golden Age, proposing to reconstruct his philosophy [End Page 333] of history. For Schlegel, the Golden Age is often deployed ironically. He rejected claims that it represented an age of greater authenticity, a position Nivala compares to Adorno's critique of fetishizing the genuine. Noting the complexity of Schlegel's conception of the Golden Age, Nivala suggests that he is ripe for various contemporary readings, including the postmodernist, the transhumanist, and the ecocriticial. Deploying a broadly chronological and biographical organization, Nivala first examines Schlegel's writings on classical poetry, arguing that he distinguishes between the myth of the Golden Age and primitivist myth, too often conflated in the critical literature. Primitivism is understood as the idea of a past epoch based on a rural way of life, closer to the rhythms of nature, a way of life more authentic than the modern, an "original" related to concepts resonating with Schiller's naive or Rousseau's "noble savage." In contrast, Schlegel sees the Golden Age in Hesiod or Genesis as an ancient trope or narrative pattern that challenged the notion of primitivism. He turns to the antiprimitivist myths of Prometheus and Orpheus, to explore a harmony between nature and technology. Schlegel also treats the myth of Atlantis as the embodiment of an anti–Golden Age. Rejecting the notion of a Golden Age as period of authentic harmony with nature, Schlegel instead posits an age of "blossoming" (Blütezeit), shifting from the mathematical metaphors of the Enlightenment to biological and chemical ones, to suggest a creative and organic relationship between the polis and the rural environment. For Schlegel, the culture of Athens—especially that expressed in Attic theater—exemplified an age of blossoming, while that of Alexandria, a culture of decline. The notion of a blossoming culture challenges the idea that humans represent something fixed and autonomous, opening the possibility of the transhuman. Nivala next explores Schlegel's studies of various cultural attempts to recreate a "national Golden Age," especially those of Augustus's Rome, Renaissance Italy, and Louis XIV's France. This in turn informs Schlegel's political thinking about the cultural prospects for the still fragmented German-speaking regions of Europe, and his sympathies for the Athenian model. Underlying this is what Nivala terms a Chiliastic reading of history, a millenarian and messianic vision of the Golden Age as the Kingdom of God. Responding to dramatic historical changes, especially in...

An Agent-Based Model of Discourse Pattern Formation in Small Groups of Competing and Cooperating Members

Discourse patterns in a small group are assumed to form largely through the group's internal social dynamics when group members compete for floor in discourse. Here we approach such discourse pattern formation through the agent-based model (ABM). In the ABM introduced here the agents' interactions and participation in discussions are dependent on the agents' inherent potential activity to participate in discussion and on realised, externalised activity, discursivity. The discourse patterns are assumed to be outcomes of peer-to-peer comparison events, where agents competitively compare their activities and discursivities, and where activities also affect agents' cooperation in increasing the discursivity, i.e. floor for discourse. These two effects and their influence on discourse pattern formation are parameterised as comptetivity and cooperativity. The discourse patterns are here based on the agents' discursivity. The patterns in groups of four agents up to seven agents are characterised through triadic census (i.e. though counting triadic sub-patterns). The cases of low competitivity is shown to give rise to fully connected egalitarian, triadic patterns, which with increasing competitivity are transformed to strong dyadic patterns. An increase in cooperativity enhances the emergence of egalitarian triads and helps to maintain the formation of fully and partially connected triadic pattern also in cases of high competitivity. In larger groups of six and seven agents, isolation becomes common, in contrast to groups of four agents where isolation is relatively rare. These results are in concordance with known empirical findings of discourse and participation patterns in small groups.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE ENCOUNTER OF WORLD RELIGIONS. CONSIDERATIONS TO A CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY OF RELIGION

A basic problem of the contemporary religious-theological discussion may consist in the task of connecting a methodically sensitive cultural-hermeneutical theory of religion with a normative perspective. This task cannot be fairly developed either from theologies of religion oriented by the religious-theological triadic pattern of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, or from the conceptions of comparative theologies. In my essay, I take up this question and try to show further aspects for the present religious-theological discussion by means of Tillich’s lectures on Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions. His contribution is a threefold one: (1.) Through the methodic assimilation of the concept of religion, the pluralism of religions becomes, in principle, recognized. (2.) The foundation of the history of religions leads to a differentiated perception of the complex interreligious exchange processes. (3.) Tillich’s theology of religion involves not only the recognition of religious pluralism, but also a methodological justification for a normative criterion for the evaluation of religions. In the form of six theses, I would like to answer the question of the consequences of what has been said so far for the reflection and treatment of religious pluralism within theology.

Discourse Patterns and Communicative Approaches for Teaching Nature of Science

This study aims to determine discourse patterns and communicative approaches utilised for teaching the nature of science (NOS) using an explicit–reflective approach. This study was conducted as part of a research project aiming to support teachers’ classroom practices through a long-term professional development program focusing on teaching NOS. Discourse analysis was used to determine classroom discourse patterns and communicative approaches. Audio and video recordings of classroom lectures conducted by 8 of the 22 teachers participating in the project were used for analysis. A total of 505 minutes of teacher–student dialogue was recorded and subsequently analysed. The results indicated that teachers used three different discourse patterns (triadic, chain, and adjacency pair) and three different communicative approaches (interactive–dialogic, interactive–authoritative, and non-interactive–dialogic) for teaching NOS using the explicit–reflective approach. The most common discourse pattern was the triadic pattern (initiation–response–evaluation), and the interactive–authoritative approach was the most common communicative approach. These findings contribute to the literature in terms of increasing the efficiency of using the explicit–reflective approach by considering classroom discourse to teach students NOS.

Triadic Formal Concept Analysis and triclustering: searching for optimal patterns

This paper presents several definitions of patterns in triadic data and results of experimental comparison of five triclustering algorithms on real-world and synthetic datasets. The evaluation is carried over such criteria as resource efficiency, noise tolerance and quality scores involving cardinality, density, coverage, and diversity of the patterns. An ideal triadic pattern is a totally dense maximal cuboid (formal triconcept). Relaxations of this notion under consideration are: OAC-triclusters; triclusters optimal with respect to the least-square criterion; and graph partitions obtained by using spectral clustering. We show that searching for an optimal tricluster cover is an NP-complete problem, whereas determining the number of such covers is #P-complete. Our extensive computational experiments lead us to a clear strategy for choosing a solution at a given dataset guided by the principle of Pareto-optimality according to the proposed criteria.

A Study on the Structure and Contents of Qoh 11:1-12:8 from the Point of View of the Triadic Pattern

A Study on the Structure and Contents of Qoh 11:1-12:8 from the Point of View of the Triadic Pattern

“«Tu mihi…»: variaciones bucólicas sobre un ritual de dedicatoria, de Virgilio a Góngora”

Fecha de recepción: 12 de febrero de 2013.Fecha de aceptación: 28 de marzo de 2013. La dedicatoria de la primera Égloga de Garcilaso de la Vega (“El dulce lamentar…”) tiene como modelo la dedicatoria de la Égloga VIII de Virgilio, pero también la de la Égloga V de las Piscatoriae de Sannazaro.Se rastrea la importancia de este segundo modelo para los imitadoresde Garcilaso. Su “patrón triádico” enfatiza la importancia de la caza, presente en Sannazaro pero no en Virgilio. Adquiere tanto en las dedicatorias de la primera Soledad y del Polifemo de Góngora una importancia central, demostrando cuánto el poeta cordobés le debe al modelo piscatorio del napolitano Sannazaro.

Strategy made simple: Thinking in threes

In this increasingly complex world, managers understandably seek experts’ advice to chart a path forward. Yet they encounter a jumble of metaphors, methods, and models; too often, old wine in new bottles. This article helps managers cut through the clutter. It presents a triangular framework which integrates concepts that, despite contrasting language, are more similar than different. The schema is based on the three kinds of Venn diagram: disjunction, containment, and intersection. Disjunction implies autonomy; containment, control; and intersection, cooperation. Every organizational strategy is a balance of these three variables. Once the triadic pattern has been grasped, managers can ‘speed-read’ the literatures on strategy, technology/organization, mergers and acquisitions, and cognition—as well as see parallels across these writings. They also become better able to address strategic issues systemically and efficiently, and to communicate to a wide organizational audience.

School trips and classroom lessons: An investigation into teacher–student talk in two settings

AbstractAlthough school trips to informal science institutions can result in conceptual and affective gains, the processes by which they do so are not yet clearly understood. Taking a sociocultural perspective that highlights the importance of discourse for learning, this work focuses on the talk that occurred in teacher–pupil interactions, both during a museum visit and during pre‐ and post‐visit lessons in the classroom. The museum setting affords many experiences not available in a classroom—does it also afford different types of discourse? Transcripts from one secondary and three primary school classes provide evidence of the extent to which teachers' talk conformed to a triadic pattern, with discourse during the pre‐ and post‐visit lessons more closely adhering to this pattern than that during the visit. However, a closer look at teacher–student discourse revealed further complexities, including greater use of open‐ended questions during triadic than during non‐triadic discourse. Overall, the findings from this research indicate that museum visits may enable pupils to assert more authority temporarily and provide insight into processes by which such experiences may contribute to learning. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 454–473, 2010

Do We Perceive Reality Correctly?: Limits on Accurate Processing of Information

The question in the title of this article sounds like something my undergraduate philosophy teacher would ask. As a philosopher, he was very skeptical about reality. He could prove that he did not exist. I once asked him you think that you do not exist, does not that, in and of itself, show that you do? but he said, No. I could very well be a disembodied mind. Pretty clever. But that is not the kind of thing I am concerned with here. Rather, I am interested in how we think, and the limitations thereof.Tripartite NarrativesSpecifically, I am concerned with an idea of Mortola (i999) that narratives-spoken or written communications-tend to get conceptualized in a tripartite manner, with the first part being equilibrium, possibly some positive event, say, marriage, the second disequilibrium, a threat to that event, say, arguments between the couple, and the third event modified equilibrium, some reconciliation, possibly only partial, of the first two, say, the couple learns some ways to get along. Of course, many di∂erent things could comprise what we are dealing with. The second event could be divorce instead of arguments. The third event would still be some attempt at reconciliation of the disequilibrium, to some extent, such as learning how to live without the other person.I thought Mortola (i999) was probably not correct: our thinking is much superior to being stuck in some tripartite way of conceptualizing things. After all, the way we think about something influences the information we have available. If we are enmeshed in some rigid style of thinking, certain outcomes seem to make sense and others do not. In fact, some outcomes will never even be considered. Of course, there are always limits on the way we process information, due to our biases, styles of thinking, the information available, etc. (Stapel, Reicher, & Spears, i994; Eckes, i994). But the tripartite way of thinking seems extremely limiting, since it forces us to order things into categories that may not be the best way to think. I thought that our thinking is superior to the limitations that Mortola described.My StudyTo test Mortola's (i999) tripartite theory, I had eight students (3 males, 5 females) volunteer as patients in group psychotherapy sessions (Eisenman, 200i). These were undergraduates who volunteered, for extra course credit, to participate in group psychotherapy. Thus, they got extra credit and free psychotherapy as well. The group psychotherapists were graduate students in a Master's level counseling psychology program; the masters level students were learning to be therapists. These graduate students were observed via closed circuit television by their instructor and other graduate students, and received feedback on their therapy skills. If Mortola is correct, when the volunteer patients give narrative accounts, they should speak in the three stages, with the first stage occurring first, the second stage next, and the third stage last. For this study, the 8 student patients received group psychotherapy with two graduate student psychotherapists, one male and one female. Two trained observers had 92 percent agreement on scoring the narratives for the presence or absence of the tripartite style. There were five group psychotherapy sessions.Here is what I found: In the first psychotherapy session, 45 percent of the patient narratives were judged to follow the Mortola (i999) view. In the second session only 20 percent of the narratives followed this pattern. In the third session 60 percent fit the triadic pattern; in the fourth 75 percent, and in the fifth and last 55 percent. Overall, for the five psychotherapy sessions the mean percentage of narratives that fit Mortola's triadic theory was 5i percent.Although there is certainly great variation from therapy session to therapy session, the overall percentage of 5i seems quite high. One could object that these student volunteers were not real patients, but that would not seem to impact the results, because the theory says it applies to narratives in general, so any story telling should fit the tripartite model. …

Ratio of Dihydropyridine to Ryanodine Receptors in Mammalian and Frog Twitch Muscles in Relation to the Mechanical Hypothesis of Excitation-Contraction Coupling

An indirect argument in favour of the mechanical hypothesis of excitation-contraction (EC) coupling [Schneider & Chandler (1973) Nature242, 244-246] is the fixed stoichiometry between the voltage-driven dihydropyridine receptor (DHP-R) on the transverse tubule (TT) and the ryanodine-sensitive Ca2+ channel (RyR) of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) terminal cisternae (TC), based mainly on the structural arrangement described by Block et al. at junctional triads of toadfish swimbladder muscle [Block, B., et al. (1988) J. Cell Biol.107, 2587-2600]. We calculated the overall DHP-R/RyR ratios for a wide variety of rabbit twitch muscles, as compared to fast- and slow-twitch muscles of the rat, and to frog sartorius, following quantification of high-affinity binding sites for tritiated PN200-110 and ryanodine. To this purpose, we carried out our binding measurements on both skeletal muscle membranes detached from myofibrils by extensive extraction with low-ionic strength medium,and on the myofibrillar residue containing a proportion of binding sites. Our results expressed per gram of muscle allow the following main conclusions: i) The overall DHP-R/RyR ratio is approximately 2 in both fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle of the rabbit, implying that most, if not all, Ca2+-channels at junctional triads are stoichiometrically associated with the voltage sensor; in agreement with Block′s model; ii) There is a major inconsistency in these values, rather than in the absolute values of RyR sites, on side by side comparison of fast-twitch and of slow-twitch muscles of the rabbit and rat, in that the DHP-R/RyR ratio is invariably lower for the rat, i.e.,only about 1.2. Since the absolute values of DHP-R sites, according to our calculations, agree well with those obtained for the same muscles by Lamb & Walsh [(1987) J. Physiol. 393, 595-617], it seems improbable that they were underestimated. On the assumption that there is a fixed stoichiometry between DHP-R and RyR at the junctional contact area between TT and TC, the relatively large excess of RyR sites in the rat, expressed per g. muscle, should be attributed to the presence of a proportion of Ca2+-channels that are located outside this area, i.e.,are extrajunctional [Dulhunty, A., et al. (1992) Proc. R. Soc. Lond. (B) 247, 69-75]. We also find similarities in DHP-R/RyR ratios between twitch muscles of the rat and the frog; iii) Our findings lend themselves to speculate that the presence of extrajunctional Ca2+-channels, which are natural candidates for Ca2+-dependent modulation of depolarization-induced Ca2+-release, is a species-specific feature, independent of the class of Vertebrates to which animals belong and of the particular triadic pattern of the muscle.

The Alienation Syndrome: A Triadic Pattern of Self-Other Orientation

A social psychological theory of personality is presented which examines the crucial relationship between self and other as perceived by the individual and communicated by topological configurations of the self in relation to.significant others. The inadequacies of self and social guidance mechanisms for social adaptation are assumed to he associated with the concept of alienation. The alienation syndrome is defined as low self esteem, low social interest, and high self, centrality. This triadic pattern is shown to describe behavior problem children, neuropsychiatric patients, and to some extent, persons over 40 years of age and American Negro children. It is suggested that the processes leading from exclusion to the alienation syndrome may be a self fulfilling prophecy mediated by reduced social reinforcement. The Alienation Syndrome:1 A Triadic Pattern of Self-Other Orientation Robert C. Ziller University of Oregon The present approach to alienation attempts to clarify the proteam term by defining it in terms of the individual's perceptions mediated by self esteem and social interest and self centrality in interaction. Alienation is defined as an attitude of hopelessness resulting from an inability to structure the environment in terms of either a stable self orientation or a stable Other orientation, and a cessation in the individual's attempts to confront the social environment. Having no guidance mechanisms from self or Other, a sense of meaningless, powerlessness, and normlessness is generated. The alienated individual does not mediate environmental stimuli through the concept of self or the concept of Other. The alienated are not accepted as members within a significant subgroup and perceive themselves as unguided persons in an unchartered environment. Against this theoretical background it is proposed that alienation evolves under conditions which generate low self esteem and low social interest, and high self centrality. Three studies will be described which demonstrate the relationship between alienation and a recurring triadic pattern of self-other orientation.

Hesse's Use of Gilgamesh-Motifs in the Humanization of Siddhartha and Harry Haller

Hesse knew and appreciated the Babylonian Gilgamesh, which is today recognized as an ancient allegory of the humanization of man. The Enkidu-episode of this epic uses certain motifs to enact the advance of its hero from bestiality to humanity: his initial characterization as a wild animal; his temptation by a courtesan; his experience of sexual intercourse and the attendant moral knowledge; his instruction in clothing, eating, and personal grooming. In these two novels, Hesse uses the same motifs to embody his theme of the hero's advance toward a higher stage of individuation. This structural parallel is striking in itself but especially significant in view of the importance of humanization in Hesse's novels. Although the most familiar form of his triadic pattern of Menschwerdung is found in the Christian tradition, Hesse does not use the exterior furnishings of any conventional path to religious enlightenment in the humanization of his heroes. Instead, he employs those motifs of Gilgamesh which, in opposition to the Bible, regard the woman in general and sexual intercourse in particular as instruments of a spiritual advance rather than of a fall.