Zen and the Art of Word Creation

Ever since Horace defended his right to “add a few words to the stock,” and a character in Shakespeare’s 1607 play “Coriolanus” proclaimed “So shall my Lungs Coine words till their decay,” word creation has been a subject of great interest, and controversy as well. What was once considered a dubious practice has become prestigious. “Coined by” is a prized phrase to have before one’s name. The supply of neologisms therefore far outstrips demand. Many are coined, few are chosen. Coined words are like salmon eggs: few hatch, fewer mature, and only a handful make it upstream. The ways in which they are created is surprisingly anarchic, analogous to the chaotic process by which the solar system was born. One might even postulate a Chaos Theory of Word Creation in which usable neologisms pop up unpredictably, strike a chord, then take their place in the verbosphere.

Sperm motility and offspring pre- and post-hatching survival in hybridization crosses among a landlocked and two anadromous Atlantic salmon populations: implications for conservation

The landlocked salmon (Salmo salar m. sebago) endemic to Lake Saimaa, Finland, is critically endangered and severely threatened by low genetic diversity and inbreeding. To explore the possibility of increasing the genetic diversity of threatened salmon populations by controlled hybridization (genetic rescue), we studied sperm motility and offspring pre- and post-hatching survival in hybridization crosses of landlocked salmon with two geographically close anadromous salmon populations (Rivers Neva and Tornio) relative to the pure-bred populations. While some degree of gametic incompatibility between landlocked and Tornio salmon cannot be ruled out, there were no indications of outbreeding depression in survival traits in these first-generation hybridizations. Instead, pre-hatching survival of landlocked salmon eggs fertilized with Neva salmon sperm and post-hatching survival of anadromous salmon eggs fertilized with landlocked salmon sperm were higher than in pure-bred landlocked salmon. These differences might imply genetic rescue effects (hybrid vigor), although there were also strong maternal effects involved. Our results on early viability point to the possibility of applying genetic rescue to the landlocked salmon population by hybridization with an anadromous population.

Revisiting the restricted movement paradigm: the dispersal of Atlantic salmon fry from artificial redds

The Restricted Movement Paradigm (RMP) asserts that stream fishes are sedentary, living much of their lives within a single reach. To test the RMP, we implanted eyed Atlantic salmon eggs (Salmo salar L.) into a total of 19 artificial redds, in seven salmon-free streams, in six years, and estimated summer fry dispersal through electrofishing surveys. As expected, most fry dispersed downstream, but an average of 35% moved upstream. Surprisingly, fry moved just as far upstream as downstream (medians = 403 and 404 m, respectively). Fry were larger at lower densities and farther from redd sites, consistent with density-dependent growth, and larger upstream than downstream, possibly indicating that larger fry were better able to move upstream against the current. Dispersal distances were normally distributed around all but two of 19 redds, and half of the downstream dispersal curves were best described by unimodal distributions, consistent with a homogeneous movement strategy. Our data suggest that salmon fry were more mobile and move upstream more than previously thought, which should facilitate their stocking or reintroduction to new habitats.

Fantasy of Nature in River: A Tread into the Aesthetic Landscape of Ted Hughes

Aesthetics studies the principles of beauty and examines the reader‟s affective domain response to an object. As a philosophical approach to art and life, aesthetics has adoration for beauty as its chief value. Thus, aesthetics and beauty correspond to beget a real aesthetic resonance in poetry. Poetry and fantasy are interwoven to disseminate pulchritude in all the feasible ways through language and content. Poets have their own landscape to exhibit their alluring portraits; likewise, Ted Hughes has his own style of expressing aesthetic fantasies which have mesmerized millions of readers. The present research paper aims to explore the fantasies of Ted Hughes with reference to the poems of River. The objective of the present research paper is to elicit the alluring landscapes sketched in the selected poems of Ted Hughes‟ River. Hughes is popularly designated as a nature poet and is appreciated for depicting multiple faces of nature. This research paper makes an aesthetic analysis of the selected poems of River to unveil the imbibed values of aestheticism such as „appreciation of nature‟ and employing „imaginative faculty‟. The selected poems for the present research are “Salmon Eggs”, “Japanese River Tales”, “Whiteness”, “Ophelia” and “Dee”