Use of Palm Oil Clinker in Concrete Research: A Review

Palm oil clinker (POC) is a stone like by-product which is formed in the palm oil mill incinerator after extracted palm oil fibres and shells are burt to generate electricity for mill operation. The electricity is continuously generated. Then, the burnt fibres and shells are thrown at dumping areas as waste. This practice consumes a larger area at the landfills, causing environmental pollution. A review on the physical and chemical properties of POC was presented. The effect of using POC as lightweight aggregates and partial cement replacement on the mechanical properties of concrete produced was reviewed. The integration of suitable amount of POC as cement replacement and lightweight aggregates provided good workability and enhanced the concrete strength. Conclusively, this article has presented information regarding the development in POC concrete research, including the research gaps that remain to be filled.

Addictive Behavioural Manifestations of Adolescents in Romania

The study examines, through a concrete research, the analysis of perceptual, ideational, attitudinal, social, family and personological factors, with cumulative-progressive effects in the genesis of the main primarily addictive behavioural forms, in groups of adolescent pupils. The approach of the topic is an interdisciplinary one, the dominant being the psychological, sociological and pedagogical dimensions, in a context seen as a reality lived and expressed verbally by the teenagers constituted investigatively in a randomly structured sample from different urban localities, either as opinions or as behavioural social and emotional-affective states specific to adolescence. The qualitative arguments and the statistical results are the materialization of the application of a valid research methodology, relevant in its associative and explanatory interactional complementarity. The conclusions of the study are relevant due to their functionality, which can possibly materialize in minimal positive interventions prior to the actual addiction in adolescent pupils in today’s Romania.

Complexity and Its Relation to Variation

This paper is concerned with the relationship between complexity and variation. The main goal is to lay out the conceptual foundations and to develop and systematize reasonable hypotheses such as to set out concrete research questions for future investigations. I first compare how complexity and variation have synchronically been studied and what kinds of questions have been asked in those studies. Departing from earlier surveys of different definitions of complexity, here I classify the majority of complexity studies into two broad types based on two ways of defining this concept. The first type determines and measures linguistic complexity by counting numbers of items (e.g., linguistic forms or rules and interactions between forms). The second type makes use of transparency and the principle of One-Meaning–One-Form. In addition, linguistic complexity has been defined by means of concepts from information theory, namely in terms of description length or information content, but those studies are in the minority. Then I define linguistic variation as a situation when two or more linguistic forms have identical or largely identical meaning and it is possible to use either the one or the other variant. Variation can be free or linguistically or socially conditioned. I argue that there is an implicational relationship between complexity of the first type that is defined in terms of numbers of items and variation. Variation is a type of complexity because it implies the existence of more than one linguistic form per meaning. But not every type of complexity involves variation because complexity defined on the basis of transparency does not necessarily imply the existence of more than one form. In the following I discuss extralinguistic factors that (possibly) have an impact on socially conditioned variation and/or complexity and can lead to an increase or decrease of complexity and/or variation. I conclude with suggestions of how to further examine the relationship between complexity and variation.

Massimo Quaini e il CISGE

Among the geographical associations the Italian Centre for Historical and Geographical Studies (CISGE) was the one with which Massimo Quaini maintained a stronger relationship. In addition to the sharing of the study fields, Quaini was also linked to CISGE by the close and inseparable link between geography and history, the combination of concrete research and theoretical reflection, the plurality of approaches, the continuous dialectic and the marked interdisciplinarity. Elements that have always characterized the Centre since its foundation, becoming concrete in meetings, seminars, conferences, research groups, national and international projects and in numerous publications. Through a careful analysis of Quaini’s writings contained in the proceedings, the collections of essays and the journal Geostorie (which since 2000 replaced the Notiziario del CISGE) – a long and uninterrupted series from 1992 to 2017 – the contribution aims at highlighting the original, critical and stimulating contribution offered by Massimo to the four fundamental study streams of CISGE: historical geography, history of cartography, history of geographical thought, history of travels and of explorations.

Corpus Pattern Analysis of of-Construction Phrase Transformations to the Genitive

While it is well known that phrase transformations take place, there has been very little concrete research on phrase transformations and the associated rules. To go some way to filling this gap, this paper used corpus pattern analysis (CPA) to examine of-construction phrases, as exemplified by on the face of it and on its face, and elucidate the syntactic manipulation in the semantic and functional features of on its face. The CPA revealed that on its face was semantically the same as on the face of it (i.e., seemingly), but that the meaning of face, i.e., appearance, had more stress in the on the face of it phrase than the end-focus. Further, on its face was found to more often co-occur with legal lexical items such as constitutional, invalid, and lawful, and to be used more often in legal contexts. The reason on its face was derived from on the face of it was found to be because of the end-focus and the influence of semantically compatible phrases, such as for the sake of ~ and for ~’s sake, on behalf of ~ and on ~’s behalf. However, it should be noted that not all phrases that have of-constructions can be transformed into the genitive; for example, for the life of me does not transform into *for my life because *for my life is most often literally interpreted. It appears that linguistic economy is the most probable reason for phrase transformations from of-constructions to genitive constructions.