Search results for: covert speech acquisition

Authors: Rana Zeina

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Cognitive and behavioral symptoms may, in fact, overlap and be related to the level of the general cognitive function. We measured the behavioral aspects of autism and its correlation to the cognitive ability in 30 children with ASD. We used a neuropsychological battery CANTAB eclipse to evaluate the ASD children's cognitive ability. Individuals with ASDs and challenging behaviors showed significant correlation between some cognitive abilities and motor behavior aspects. Based on these findings we can conclude that the motor behavioral problems in autism affect specific cognitive abilities in ASDs such as comprehension, learning, reversal, acquisition, attention set shifting, and speed of reaction to one stimulus. Future research should also focus on the relationship between motor stereotypes and other subtypes of repetitive behaviors, such as verbal stereotypes, and ritual and routine adherence and use different types of CANTAB tests.

Keywords: cognitive ability, CANTAB test, behaviour motor aspects, autism spectrum disorders

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Authors: Fatemehsadat Mousaviabarbekouh

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Population growth and changing consumption patterns have led to waste management becoming a significant global challenge. With projections indicating that nearly 67% of the Earth's population will live in megacities by 2050, there is a pressing need for smart solutions to address citizens' demands. Waste collection, facilitated by the Internet of Things (IoT), offers an efficient and cost-effective approach. This study aims to review the utilization of IoT for waste collection and explore technologies that promote eco-friendly waste management. The research focuses on information and communication technologies (ICTs), including spatial, identification, acquisition, and data communication technologies. Additionally, the study examines various energy harvesting technologies to further reduce costs. The findings indicate that the application of these technologies can lead to significant cost savings, energy efficiency, and ultimately reshape the future of waste management.

Keywords: waste collection, IoT, smart cities, eco-friendly, information and communication technologies, energy harvesting

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Authors: Daria Beziakina, Elena Bulgakova

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The paper deals with cross-gender and cross-linguistic comparison of pitch characteristics for Tuvinian with two other Turkic languages - Uzbek and Azerbaijani, based on the results of statistical analysis of pitch parameter values and intonation patterns used by male and female speakers. The main goal of our work is to obtain the ranges of pitch parameter values typical for Tuvinian speakers for the purpose of automatic language identification. We also propose a cross-gender analysis of declarative intonation in the poorly studied Tuvinian language. The ranges of pitch parameter values were obtained by means of specially developed software that deals with the distribution of pitch values and allows us to obtain statistical language-specific pitch intervals.

Keywords: speech analysis, statistical analysis, speaker recognition, identification of person

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Authors: Abeba Nigussie Turi, Xiangming Samuel Li

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Data-driven business models are more typical for established businesses than early-stage startups that strive to penetrate a market. This paper provided an extensive discussion on the principles of data analytics for early-stage digital entrepreneurial businesses. Here, we developed data-driven decision-making (DDDM) framework that applies to startups prone to multifaceted barriers in the form of poor data access, technical and financial constraints, to state some. The startup DDDM framework proposed in this paper is novel in its form encompassing startup data analytics enablers and metrics aligning with startups' business models ranging from customer-centric product development to servitization which is the future of modern digital entrepreneurship.

Keywords: startup data analytics, data-driven decision-making, data acquisition, data generation, digital entrepreneurship

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Authors: Hiroki Shinkawa, Tadaaki Tomiie

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Many interventions for social skills acquisition aim to decrease the gap between social skills deficits in the individual and normative social skills; nevertheless little is known of typical social skills according to age difference in students. In this study, we developed new quintet of Hokkaido Social Skills Inventory (HSSI) in order to identify age-appropriate social skills for school adaptation. First, we selected 13 categories of social skills for school adaptation from previous studies, and created questionnaire items through discussion by 25 teachers in all three levels from elementary schools to senior high schools. Second, the factor structures of five versions of the social skills scale were investigated on 2nd grade (n = 1,864), 4th grade (n = 1,936), 6th grade (n = 2,085), 7th grade (n = 2,007), and 10th grade (n = 912) students, respectively. The exploratory factor analysis showed that a number of constructing factors of social skills increased as one’s grade in school advanced. The results in the present study can be useful to characterize the age-appropriate social skills for school adaptation.

Keywords: social skills, age difference, children, adolescents

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Authors: Sunday Ose Ugadu

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Unemployment, especially graduate unemployment is, for now, the greatest problem facing Nigeria as a nation. It is responsible for most of the other ills of the country, including kidnapping, armed robbery, youth restiveness, thuggery, to mention but a few. More and more people in Nigeria are now losing confidence in the prospect of tertiary education as an instrument par excellence for effecting national development. This paper, therefore, critically examined the problem of graduate unemployment in Nigeria. It briefly traced the history of university education in Nigeria. The rate and causes of graduate unemployment in Nigeria were also discussed. Previous attempts made by the government to solve the problem of unemployment were highlighted. The paper also harped on the prospect of entrepreneurship education as an instrument for fighting graduate unemployment identifying obstacles to entrepreneurship education in Nigeria. The paper drew conclusion, and major recommendation made was a call for converting the National Youth Service Corps Scheme in Nigeria to entrepreneurship and skills acquisition scheme as soon as possible.

Keywords: graduate, unemployment, entrepreneurship education, national development

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Authors: Sultana Razia

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of early therapeutic intervention on children with an autism spectrum disorder. Participants were 140 children with autism spectrum disorder from Autism Corner in a selected rehabilitation center of Bangladesh. This study included children who are at aged of 18-month to 36-month and who were taking occupational therapy and speech and language therapy from the autism center. They were primarily screened using M-CHAT; however, children with other physical disabilities or medical conditions were excluded. 3-months interventions of 6 sessions per week are a minimum of 45-minutes long per session, one to one interaction followed by parent-led structured home-based therapy were provided. The results indicated that early intensive therapeutic intervention improves understanding, social skills and sensory skills. It can be concluded that therapeutic early intervention has a positive effect on diminishing symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Keywords: autism, m-chat, reciprocal social behavior, CRP

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Authors: Mohamed Yacoub

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This paper investigates the English loanwords in the Egyptian variety of Arabic and reaches three findings. Data, in the first finding, were collected from Egyptian movies and soap operas; over two hundred words have been borrowed from English, code-switching was not included. These words then have been put into eleven different categories according to their use and part of speech. Finding two addresses the morphological and phonological change that occurred to these words. Regarding the phonological change, eight categories were found in both consonant and vowel variation, five for consonants and three for vowels. Examples were given for each. Regarding the morphological change, five categories were found including the masculine, feminine, dual, broken, and non-pluralize-able nouns. The last finding is the answers to a four-question survey that addresses forty eight native speakers of Egyptian Arabic and found that most participants did not recognize English borrowed words and thought they were originally Arabic and could not give Arabic equivalents for the loanwords that they could recognize.

Keywords: sociolinguistics, loanwords, borrowing, morphology, phonology, variation, Egyptian dialect

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Authors: Tonoyan Lusine

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The Communicative Grammar (CG) of a language deals with semantics and pragmatics in the first place as communication is a process of generating speech. As it is well known people can communicate with the help of limited word expressions and grammatical means. As to non-verbal communication, both vocabulary and grammar are not essential at all. However, the development of the communicative competence lies in verbal, non-verbal, grammatical, socio-cultural and intercultural awareness. There are several important issues and environment management strategies related to effective communication that one might need to consider for a positive learning experience. International students bring a broad range of cultural perspectives to the learning environment, and this diversity has the capacity to improve interaction and to enrich the teaching/learning process. Intercultural setting implies creative and thought-provoking work with different cultural worldviews and international perspectives. It is worth mentioning that the use of Communicative Grammar models creates a profound background for the effective intercultural communication.

Keywords: CG, cross-cultural communication, intercultural awareness, non-verbal behavior

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Authors: Besa Muthuri

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This paper examines the correlation between the organization's human resources (HR) and marketing entities and reviews the literature on customer acquisition and loyalty retention and the various aspects of employer branding. It will also explore how these concepts can be applied to the marketing and human resources departments. HR and marketing teams in the organization function to educate, attract and retain the attention and interests of the modern talent market. While the teams' target products, personas, or services tend to differ, their execution, desired results, and implementation of the respective activities are closely related. Therefore, promoting collaboration between HR and marketing enables the company to enhance business branding and recruitment of top-tier talents that will drive the much-needed change in the organization and promote a higher employee and customer retention rate. To achieve the ultimate HR and marketing relationship, organizations should build their external and internal awareness, track their performance and programs, and promote in-house meetings among employees from all interfacing departments.

Keywords: branding, employee retention, human resources, marketing

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Authors: Rizkia Shafarini

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The film A Beautiful Mind explores hallucination in this study. A Beautiful Mind depicts the tale of John Nash, a university student who dislikes studying in class or prefers to study alone. Throughout his life, John Nash has hallucinated, or what is known as schizophrenia, as depicted in the film A Beautiful Mind. The goal of this study was to figure out what hallucinations were, what caused them, and how John Nash managed his hallucinations. In general, this study examines the link between language and mind, or the linguistic relationship portrayed in John Nash's character's speech, as evidenced by his conduct. This study takes a psycholinguistic approach to data analysis by employing qualitative methodologies. Data sources include talks and scenes from the film A Beautiful Mind. Hearing, seeing, and feeling are the scientific results of John Nash's hallucinations in the film A Beautiful Mind. Second, dreams, aspirations, and sickness are the sources of John Nash's hallucinations. Third, John Nash's method of managing hallucinations is to see a doctor without medical or distracting assistance.

Keywords: A Beautiful Mind, hallucination, psycholinguistic, John Nash

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Authors: Andreas Jede, Frank Teuteberg

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Cloud computing (CC) has already gained overall appreciation in research and practice. Whereas the willingness to integrate cloud services in various IT environments is still unbroken, the previous CC procurement processes run mostly in an unorganized and non-standardized way. In practice, a sufficiently specific, yet applicable business process for the important acquisition phase is often lacking. And research does not appropriately remedy this deficiency yet. Therefore, this paper introduces a field-tested approach for CC procurement. Based on an extensive literature review and augmented by expert interviews, we designed a model that is validated and further refined through an in-depth real-life case study. For the detailed process description, we apply the event-driven process chain notation (EPC). The gained valuable insights into the case study may help CC research to shift to a more socio-technical area. For practice, next to giving useful organizational instructions we will provide extended checklists and lessons learned.

Keywords: cloud procurement process, IT-organization, event-driven process chain, in-depth case study

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Authors: Bairam Khan, Premlata Vaishnava

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The ability to conceptualize one entity in terms of another allows us to communicate through metaphors. This central feature of human cognition has evolved with the development of language, and the processing of metaphors is without any conscious appraisal and is quite effortless. South Asians, like other speech communities, have been using the kitchenary [culinary] metaphor in a very simple yet interesting way and are known for bringing into new and unique constellations wherever they are. This composite feature of our language is used to communicate in a precise and compact manner and maneuvers the expression. The present study explores the role of kitchenary metaphors in the making and shaping of idioms by applying Cognitive Metaphor Theories. Drawing on examples from a corpus of adverts, print, and electronic media, the study looks at the metaphorical language used by real people in real situations. The overarching theme throughout the course is that kitchenary metaphors are powerful tools of expression in Hindi-Urdu.

Keywords: cognitive metaphor theories, kitchenary metaphors, hindi-urdu print, and electronic media, grammatical structure of kitchenary metaphors of hindi-urdu

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Authors: Sheryl Bernardo-Hinesley

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Heritage language learners are students who have been raised in a home where a minority language is spoken, who speaks or merely understand the minority heritage language, but to some degree are bilingual in the majority and the heritage language. In view of the rising university enrollment by Hispanics in the United States who have chosen to study Spanish, university language programs are currently faced with challenges of accommodating the language needs of heritage language learners of Spanish. The present study investigates the heritage language perception and language attitudes by heritage language learners of Spanish, as well as their classroom language learning experiences and needs. In order to carry out the study, a qualitative survey was used to gather data from university students. Analysis of students' responses indicates that heritage learners are motivated to learn the heritage language. In relation to the aspects of focus of a language course for heritage learners, results show that the aspects of interest are accent marks and spelling, grammatical accuracy, vocabulary, writing, reading, and culture.

Keywords: heritage language learners, language acquisition, linguistic attitudes, Spanish in the US

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Authors: Lillie Lum

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Focusing on the role of official language in immigrant integration, this paper will first report the results of a literature review and demonstrate that there is no doubt on the necessity of adequate language skills for newcomers to successfully settle, adapt, and integrate socially, culturally and economically in Canada. This paper attempts to synthesize the literature in order to shed light on the language policy terrain which is not easy to navigate. Then, by outlining what is currently available in the language policy environment, it will ask if the current state of language training in Canada is adequate to assist newcomers in their language acquisition process. At a deeper level, it aims to continue to raise questions in this policy area. Are current policy responses likely to improve linguistic capabilities in the future, particularly for immigrant workers with poor language proficiency? This paper is timely given the magnitude of the language issue and the value of immigrants for Canada’s economic, social, and political vitality.

Keywords: official language education, immigrant integration into Canada, economic factors, policy implications

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Authors: Bairam Khan, Premlata Vaishnava

Abstract:

The ability to conceptualize one entity in terms of another allows us to communicate through metaphors. This central feature of human cognition has evolved with the development of language, and the processing of metaphors is without any conscious appraisal and is quite effortless. South Asians, like other speech communities, have been using the kitchenary [culinary] metaphor in a very simple yet interesting way and are known for bringing into new and unique constellations wherever they are. This composite feature of our language is used to communicate in a precise and compact manner and maneuvers the expression. The present study explores the role of kitchenary metaphors in the making and shaping of idioms by applying Cognitive Metaphor Theories. Drawing on examples from a corpus of adverts, print, and electronic media, the study looks at the metaphorical language used by real people in real situations. The overarching theme throughout the course is that kitchenary metaphors are powerful tools of expression in Hindi-Urdu.

Keywords: cognitive metaphor theory, source domain, target domain, signifier- signified, kitchenary, ethnocultural elements of south asia and hindi- urdu language

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

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This paper presents a weighted approach to unconstrained iris recognition. Nowadays, commercial systems are usually characterized by strong acquisition constraints based on the subject’s cooperation. However, it is not always achievable for real scenarios in our daily life. Researchers have been focused on reducing these constraints and maintaining the performance of the system by new techniques at the same time. With large variation in the environment, there are two main improvements to develop the proposed iris recognition system. For solving extremely uneven lighting condition, statistic based illumination normalization is first used on eye region to increase the accuracy of iris feature. The detection of the iris image is based on Adaboost algorithm. Secondly, the weighted approach is designed by Gaussian functions according to the distance to the center of the iris. Furthermore, local binary pattern (LBP) histogram is then applied to texture classification with the weight. Experiment showed that the proposed system provided users a more flexible and feasible way to interact with the verification system through iris recognition.

Keywords: authentication, iris recognition, adaboost, local binary pattern

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Authors: Dielleza Namani, Laureta Kadrijaj-Qerimi

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Neurolinguistics studies the relationship between the brain and language. It is a subject not often found in the syllabus of universities in the Balkans but more spread in Europe and especially the United States of America. The purpose of this study is to see what importance this subject has for studies in the English language department. It contains an analysis of other research papers written regarding neurolinguistics, a questionnaire made for professors and deans at private and public universities in Kosovo, and an interview with a neurolinguistics professor in England. Since this subject is not found in the syllabus of any of the universities in Kosovo, the researchers wanted to find out why this happens but, at the same time, provide reasons why they should consider having it in the future. The results showed that for this subject, there had been researching made, but not enough so far, which gives more information and feedback on why it needs to be in the syllabus, and how linguists can use the knowledge they receive from this subject in their workplace. Also, the professors and deans see this subject as too medical for their students to learn and not necessary for their future jobs. Hopefully, in the near future, there will be more research done on why this is important and how English language students can benefit from it.

Keywords: English language department, neurolinguistics, second language acquisition, teaching methods

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Authors: Stefanie Rukavina, Sascha Gruss, Steffen Walter, Holger Hoffmann, Harald C. Traue

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OPEN-EmoRecII is an open multimodal corpus with experimentally induced emotions. In the first half of the experiment, emotions were induced with standardized picture material and in the second half during a human-computer interaction (HCI), realized with a wizard-of-oz design. The induced emotions are based on the dimensional theory of emotions (valence, arousal and dominance). These emotional sequences - recorded with multimodal data (mimic reactions, speech, audio and physiological reactions) during a naturalistic-like HCI-environment one can improve classification methods on a multimodal level. This database is the result of an HCI-experiment, for which 30 subjects in total agreed to a publication of their data including the video material for research purposes. The now available open corpus contains sensory signal of: video, audio, physiology (SCL, respiration, BVP, EMG Corrugator supercilii, EMG Zygomaticus Major) and mimic annotations.

Keywords: open multimodal emotion corpus, annotated labels, intelligent interaction

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Authors: T. Sanches, K. Bousson

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As part of the development of a 4D autopilot system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), i.e. a time-dependent robust trajectory generation and control algorithm, this work addresses the problem of optimal path control based on the flight sensors data output that may be unreliable due to noise on data acquisition and/or transmission under certain circumstances. Although several filtering methods, such as the Kalman-Bucy filter or the Linear Quadratic Gaussian/Loop Transfer Recover Control (LQG/LTR), are available, the utter complexity of the control system, together with the robustness and reliability required of such a system on a UAV for airworthiness certifiable autonomous flight, required the development of a proper robust filter for a nonlinear system, as a way of further mitigate errors propagation to the control system and improve its ,performance. As such, a nonlinear algorithm based upon the LQG/LTR, is validated through computational simulation testing, is proposed on this paper.

Keywords: autonomous flight, LQG/LTR, nonlinear state estimator, robust flight control

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Authors: Zhan Zheng-Qun, Li Min, Xie Yan

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Technology plays a key role in determining productivity and economy development in a country. The process of enterprises’ innovation can be seen as a process of knowledge management including the process of knowledge attainment; acquisition and converting and integrating into new knowledge. This research analyzes the influence factors and mechanism of the independent innovation of high-tech enterprises in the year 1995-2013. The result shows that the technology import has a significant positive effect on the innovation capacity of enterprises. And the absorptive capacity, represented by the research outlay input and research staff input, has a significant positive effect on the innovation capacity of enterprises. Furthermore, the effect of technology import on the independent research capacity of high-tech enterprises is significantly positively affected by their absorptive capacity.

Keywords: technology import, innovation capacity, absorptive capacity, high-tech industry

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Authors: Elaine Y. L. Ng

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Elizabeth Gilbert’s (2006) biography Eat, Pray, Love describes her travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia after a painful divorce. The author’s experiences with love, loss, search for happiness, and meaning have resonated with a huge readership. As regards the translation of Gilbert’s (2006) Eat, Pray, Love into Chinese, it was first translated by a Taiwanese translator He Pei-Hua and published in Taiwan in 2007 by Make Boluo Wenhua Chubanshe with the fairly catching title “Enjoy! Traveling Alone.” The same translation was translocated to China, republished in simplified Chinese characters by Shanxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe in 2008 and renamed in China, entitled “To Be a Girl for the Whole Life.” Later on, the same translation in simplified Chinese characters was reprinted by Hunan Wenyi Chubanshe in 2013. This study employs Munday’s (2002) systemic model for descriptive translation studies to investigate the translation of Gilbert’s (2006) Eat, Pray, Love into Chinese by the Taiwanese translator Hu Pei-Hua. It employs an interdisciplinary approach, combining systemic functional linguistics and corpus stylistics with sociohistorical research within a descriptive framework to study the translator’s discursive presence in the text. The research consists of three phases. The first phase is to locate the target text within its socio-cultural context. The target-text context concerning the para-texts, readers’ responses, and the publishers’ orientation will be explored. The second phase is to compare the source text and the target text for the categorization of translation shifts by using the methodological tools of systemic functional linguistics and corpus stylistics. The investigation concerns the rendering of mental clauses and speech and thought presentation. The final phase is an explanation of the causes of translation shifts. The linguistic findings are related to the extra-textual information collected in an effort to ascertain the motivations behind the translator’s choices. There exist sets of possible factors that may have contributed to shaping the textual features of the given translation within a specific socio-cultural context. The study finds that the translator generally reproduces the mental clauses and speech and thought presentation closely according to the original. Nevertheless, the language of the translation has been widely criticized to be unidiomatic and stiff, losing the elegance of the original. In addition, the several Chinese translations of the given text produced by one Taiwanese and two Chinese publishers are basically the same. They are repackaged slightly differently, mainly with the change of the book cover and its captions for each version. By relating the textual findings to the extra-textual data of the study, it is argued that the popularity of the Chinese translation of Gilbert’s (2006) Eat, Pray, Love may not be attributed to the quality of the translation. Instead, it may have to do with the way the work is promoted strategically by the social media manipulated by the four e-bookstores promoting and selling the book online in China.

Keywords: chinese translation of eat pray love, corpus stylistics, motivations for translation shifts, systemic approach to translation studies

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Authors: Hossam M. Moftah, Aboul Ella Hassanien

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In the recent years the importance of automatic traffic control has increased due to the traffic jams problem especially in big cities for signal control and efficient traffic management. Traffic counting as a kind of traffic control is important to know the road traffic density in real time. This paper presents a fast and robust traffic counting system using different image processing techniques. The proposed system is composed of the following four fundamental building phases: image acquisition, pre-processing, object detection, and finally counting the connected objects. The object detection phase is comprised of the following five steps: subtracting the background, converting the image to binary, closing gaps and connecting nearby blobs, image smoothing to remove noises and very small objects, and detecting the connected objects. Experimental results show the great success of the proposed approach.

Keywords: traffic counting, traffic management, image processing, object detection, computer vision

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Authors: Irdawati Bay Nalls

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This study looked at Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA) Spanish-English Mexican Americans across an elementary public school in the United States and the possibility of maintaining harmonious bilingualism. Adopting a phenomenological approach, with a focus on the status of bilingualism in education within a marginalized community, classroom observations, and small group and one-on-one interviews were conducted. This study explored the struggles of these bilinguals as they acculturated in America through their attempt to blend heritage and societal languages and cultural practices. Results revealed that bilinguals as young as 5 years old expressed their need to retain Spanish as a heritage language while learning English. 12 years old foresee that Spanish will not be taught to them in schools and highlighted the need to learn Spanish outside the school environments. Their voices revealed counter-narratives on identity and the need to maintain harmonious bilingualism as these students strived to give equal importance to the learning of English and Spanish as first languages despite the setbacks faced.

Keywords: BFLA, Mexican-American, bilingual, harmonious bilingualism

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Authors: Krzysztof Malczewski

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Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) reconstruction algorithm using compressed sensing is presented in this paper. It is exhibited that the offered approach improves MR images spatial resolution in circumstances when highly undersampled k-space trajectories are applied. Compressed Sensing (CS) aims at signal and images reconstructing from significantly fewer measurements than were conventionally assumed necessary. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a fundamental medical imaging method struggles with an inherently slow data acquisition process. The use of CS to MRI has the potential for significant scan time reductions, with visible benefits for patients and health care economics. In this study the objective is to combine super-resolution image enhancement algorithm with CS framework benefits to achieve high resolution MR output image. Both methods emphasize on maximizing image sparsity on known sparse transform domain and minimizing fidelity. The presented algorithm considers the cardiac and respiratory movements.

Keywords: super-resolution, MRI, compressed sensing, sparse-sense, image enhancement

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Authors: Isaiah Ifeanyichukwu Agbo

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Human speech is capable of serving many purposes. Power and control are not always exercised overtly by linguistic acts, but maybe enacted and exercised in the myriad of taken-for-granted actions of everyday life. Domination, power control, discrimination and mind control exist in human speech and may lead to asymmetrical power relations. In discourse, there are persuasive and manipulative linguistic acts that serve to establish solidarity and identification with the 'we group' and polarize with the 'they group'. Political discourse is crafted to defend and promote the problematic narrative of outright controversial events in a nation’s history thereby sustaining domination, marginalization, manipulation, inequalities and injustices, often without the dominated and marginalized group being aware of them. They are designed and positioned to serve the political and social needs of the producers. Political crisis speeches in Nigeria, just like in other countries concentrate on positive self-image, de-legitimization of political opponents, reframing accusation to one’s advantage, redefining problematic terms and adopting reversal strategy. In most cases, the people are ignorant of the hidden ideological positions encoded in the text. Few researches have been conducted adopting the frameworks of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics to investigate this situation in the political crisis speeches in Nigeria. In this paper, we focus attention on the analyses of the linguistic, semantic, and ideological elements in selected political crisis speeches in Nigeria to investigate if they create and sustain unequal power relations and manipulative tendencies from the perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Critical Discourse Analysis unpacks both opaque and transparent structural relationships of power dominance, power relations and control as manifested in language. Critical discourse analysis emerged from a critical theory of language study which sees the use of language as a form of social practice where social relations are reproduced or contested and different interests are served. Systemic function linguistics relates the structure of texts to their function. Fairclough’s model of CDA and Halliday’s systemic functional approach to language study are adopted in this paper. This paper probes into language use that perpetuates inequalities. This study demystifies the hidden implicature of the selected political crisis speeches and reveals the existence of information that is not made explicit in what the political actors actually say. The analysis further reveals the ideological configurations present in the texts. These ideological standpoints are the basis for naturalizing implicit ideologies and hegemonic influence in the texts. The analyses of the texts further uncovered the linguistic and discursive strategies deployed by text producers to manipulate the unsuspecting members of the public both mentally and conceptually in order to enact, sustain and maintain unhealthy power relations at crisis times in the Nigerian political history.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis, language, political crisis, power relations, systemic functional linguistics

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Authors: Sunday Odunaiya

Abstract:

The statistics of banks in operation in this current dispensation compared to some decades ago has brought about a lot of changes on the face of the financial system. The demand of customers, technological advancement, and government policies among others has therefore generated a lot of heat for financial sector’s growth, sustenance and survival. This paper discusses mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in banking sector using West Africa as a yardstick of evaluation. It explains rigorously the conditions that warrant mergers and acquisitions in the banking sector, its effect, and how to ensure mergers and acquisitions effectiveness in the banking sector. The conceptual and empirical review of the relevant literature were done systematically while value-increasing and value-decreasing theories were used to substantiate the discourse. Findings of this paper show that mergers and acquisitions is a practical and conscious activity in Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast from earliest time till date with tremendous turnaround in the financial sector. It was found out that M&A is consensually arrived at by the targets and the acquirer on a value-based account. In other words, merger and acquisition is a deliberate decision reached by the management of such bank for a ‘just cause’.

Keywords: acquisitions, merger, management, financial sector

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Authors: Hsiu Hua Hu

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Digital transformation has widely affected various industries. It provides technological innovation, process redesign, new business model construction, and talent value creation. This transformation not only allows organizations to obtain and deploy specific technologies and methods suitable for organizational reengineering but also is an important way to solve management problems in human resource (HR) reengineering, business efficiency, and process redesign. In this study, we present the results of a qualitative study that offers insight into a series of key feature of reengineering related to the digital transformation and how to create talent value when the companies successfully perform digital transformation and human resource reengineering, which is led by business digitalization strategies including talent planning, talent acquisition, talent adjustment, and talent development. Drawing from the qualitative investigation findings, we built an inductive model of HR reengineering, which aims to provide research and practical references on future digital transformation and management inquiry.

Keywords: talent value creation, digital transformation, HR reengineering, qualitative study

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Authors: C. Surmei

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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disorder that can affect an individual’s (but is not limited to) cognitive development, emotional development, language acquisition and the capability to relate to others. Ecological Systems Theory is a sociocultural theory that focuses on environmental systems with which an individual interacts. The SCERTS Model is an educational approach and multidisciplinary framework that addresses the challenges confronted by individuals on the autism spectrum and other developmental disabilities. To aid the understanding of ASD and educational philosophies for families, educators, and the global community alike, a Comparative Analysis was undertaken to examine key variables (the child, society, education, nurture/care, relationships, communication). The results indicated that the Ecological Systems Theory and the SCERTS Model were comparable in focus, motivation, and application, attaining to a viable and notable relationship between both theories. This paper unpacks two child development philosophies and their relationship to each other.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, ecological systems theory, education, SCERTS model

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Authors: Svetlana Polskaya

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The study deals with the issue of using the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) concept when teaching Master Program students majoring in neuromarketing and entrepreneurship. Present-day employers expect young graduates to conduct professional communication with their English-speaking peers and demonstrate proper knowledge of the industry’s terminology and jargon. The idea of applying CLIL was the result of the above-mentioned students possessing high proficiency in English, thus, not requiring any further knowledge of the English language in terms of traditional grammar or lexis. Due to this situation, a CLIL-type program was devised, allowing learners to acquire new knowledge of entrepreneurship and neuromarketing spheres combined with simultaneous honing their English language practical usage. The case study analyzes CLIL application within this particular program as well as the experience accumulated in the process.

Keywords: CLIL, entrepreneurship, neuromarketing, foreign language acquisition, proficiency level

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