Search results for: foreign language system

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: Vakhtang Charaia, Mariam Lashkhi

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Foreign direct investment (FDI) plays a vital role in global business. It provides firms with new markets and advertising channels, cheaper production facilities, admission to new technology, products, skills and financing. FDI can provide a recipient country/company with a source of new technologies, capital, practice, products, management skills, and as such can be a powerful drive for economic development. It is one of the key elements of stable economic development in many countries, especially in developing ones. Therefore the size of FDI inflow is one of the most crustal factors for economic perfection in small economy countries (like, Georgia), while most of developed ones are net exporters of FDI. Since, FDI provides firms with new markets; admission to new technologies, products and management skills; marketing channels; cheaper production facilities, and financing opportunities. It plays a significant role in Georgian economic development. Increasing FDI inflows from all over the world to Georgia in last decade was achieved with the outstanding reforms managed by the Georgian government. However, such important phenomenon as world financial crisis and Georgian-Russian war put its consequence on the over amount of FDI inflow in Georgia in the last years. It is important to mention that the biggest investor region for Georgia is EU, which is interested in Georgia not only from the economic points of view but from political. The case studies from main EU investor countries show that Georgia has a big potential of investment in different areas, such as; financial sector, energy, construction, tourism industry, transport and communications. Moreover, signing of Association Agreement between Georgia and EU will further boost all the fields of economy in Georgia in both short and long terms. It will attract more investments from different countries and especially from EU. The last, but not least important issue is the calculation of annual FDI inflow to Georgia, which it is calculated differently by different organizations, based on different methodologies, but what is more important is that all of them show significant increase of FDI in last decade, which gives a positive signal to investors and underlines necessity of further improvement of investment climate in the same direction.

Keywords: foreign direct investment (FDI), Georgia, investment development path, investment climate

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Authors: Samiksha Raviraja, Junaid Arif

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One of the most important abilities in species is the ability to communicate. This paper proposes steps to take when and if aliens came in contact with humans, and how humans would communicate with them. The situation would be a time-sensitive scenario, meaning that communication is at the utmost importance if such an event were to happen. First, humans would need to establish mutual peace by conveying that there is no threat to the alien race. Second, the aliens would need to acknowledge this understanding and reciprocate. This would be extremely difficult to do regardless of their intelligence level unless they are very human-like and have similarities to our way of communicating. The first step towards understanding their mind is to analyze their level of intelligence - Level 1-Low intelligence, Level 2-Human-like intelligence or Level 3-Advanced or High Intelligence. These three levels go hand in hand with the Kardashev scale. Further, the Barrow scale will also be used to categorize alien species in hopes of developing a common universal language to communicate in. This paper will delve into how the level of intelligence can be used toward achieving communication with aliens by predicting various possible scenarios and outcomes by proposing an intensive categorization system. This can be achieved by studying their Emotional and Intelligence Quotient (along with technological and scientific knowledge/intelligence). The limitations and capabilities of their intelligence must also be studied. By observing how they respond and react (expressions and senses) to different kinds of scenarios, items and people, the data will help enable good categorisation. It can be hypothesised that the more human-like aliens are or can relate to humans, the more likely it is that communication is possible. Depending on the situation, either human can teach aliens a human language, or humans can learn an alien language, or both races work together to develop a mutual understanding or mode of communication. There are three possible ways of contact. Aliens visit Earth, or humans discover aliens while on space exploration or through technology in the form of signals. A much rarer case would be humans and aliens running into each other during a space expedition of their own. The first two possibilities allow a more in-depth analysis of the alien life and enhanced results compared. The importance of finding a method of talking with aliens is important in order to not only protect Earth and humans but rather for the advancement of Science through the shared knowledge between the two species.

Keywords: intelligence, Kardashev scale, Barrow scale, alien civilizations, emotional and intelligence quotient

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Authors: Marlyn Mathew

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Communication is the key factor in any vocational /job set-up. However many persons with disabilities suffer a deficit in this very area in terms of comprehension, expression and cognitive skills making it difficult for them to get employed appropriately or stay employed. Vocational Rehabilitation is a continuous and coordinated process which involves the provision of vocational related services designed to enable a person with disability to obtain and maintain employment. Therefore the role of the speech language pathologist is crucial in assessing the communication deficits and needs of the individual at the various phases of employment- right from the time of seeking a job and attending interview with suitable employers and also at regular intervals of the employment. This article discusses the various communication deficits and the obstacles faced by individuals with special needs including but not limited to cognitive- linguistic deficits, execution function deficits, speech and language processing difficulties and strategies that can be introduced in the workplace to overcome these obstacles including use of visual cues, checklists, flow charts. The paper also throws light on the importance of educating colleagues and work partners about the communication difficulties faced by the individual. This would help to reduce the communication barriers in the workplace, help colleagues develop an empathetic approach and also reduce misunderstandings that can arise as a result of the communication impairment.

Keywords: vocational rehabilitation, disability, speech language pathologist, cognitive, linguistics

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Authors: Antonia Tsaknaki

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There are many and divergent views on how the science of translation should be taught in academic institutions or colleges, meaning as an independent study area or as part of Linguistics, Literature or Foreign Languages Departments. A much more debated issue refers to the question of whether translation theory should be included in syllabuses and study programs or the focus should be solely on practicing the profession, that is translating texts. This dissertation examines prevailing views on the significance of translation theory in translation studies in order to design an open course on moodle. Taking into account that there is a remarkable percentage of translation professionals who are self-taught without having any specific studies, the course aims at helping either translation students or professional translators familiarize with concepts, methods and problem-solving strategies that are considered necessary during the process. It is organized in four modules where the learner is guided through a series of topics (register, equivalence, decision-making, level of naturalness, Skopos theory etc); after completing these topics, they are given assignments (further reading) and texts to work on in order to practice the skills obtained. The course does not focus on a specific language pair and therefore is suitable for every individual who needs a theoretical background to boost their performance or for institutions seeking to save classroom time but not at the expense of learners’ skills.

Keywords: MOOCs, moodle, online learning, open courses, translation, translation theory

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Authors: Shiza Nisar

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This study examines how editorials in Pakistan’s English-language newspapers represented the Aurat March in Pakistan, which is held on International Women’s Day, 8 March, to reclaim public spaces for women. There was a public outcry against the controversial movement, sparked by the key messages and slogans used to communicate with the masses. This research aims to study non-western news frames used by Pakistan’s leading English-language newspapers—Dawn, The Express Tribune, The News, and The Nation—for the portrayal of Aurat March since 2018. The findings show how these editorials construct and reinforce the concept of feminism being threatened by the dangerous other. This research aims to contribute to the understanding of Pakistan’s elite discourse, which insists that this event is a movement led by females in a male-dominated society to voice their rights and reclaim public spaces; however, this movement is more than just that.

Keywords: discourse, Aurat March, media framing, feminist movement, editorials

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Authors: Mohammed Hasan Salahat, Stave Wade

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This paper presents an application of a “Systematic Soft Domain Driven Design Framework” as a soft systems approach to domain-driven design of information systems development. The framework combining techniques from Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and an implementation pattern knows as ‘Naked Objects’. This framework have been used in action research projects that have involved the investigation and modeling of business processes using object-oriented domain models and the implementation of software systems based on those domain models. Within this framework, Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is used as a guiding methodology to explore the problem situation and to develop the domain model using UML for the given business domain. The framework is proposed and evaluated in our previous works, and a real case study ‘Information Retrieval System for Academic Research’ is used, in this paper, to show further practice and evaluation of the framework in different business domain. We argue that there are advantages from combining and using techniques from different methodologies in this way for business domain modeling. The framework is overviewed and justified as multi-methodology using Mingers Multi-Methodology ideas.

Keywords: SSM, UML, domain-driven design, soft domain-driven design, naked objects, soft language, information retrieval, multimethodology

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Authors: Farid Noor Romadlon

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Welcoming the ASEAN Economic Community and globalization, people need to have a good communication skill. Being able to speak English is one of important qualification in this skill and as global citizen. This study focused on fostering fresh graduate students’ confidence in speaking English. So, students have good performance in speaking. There were thirty (30) students from first semester of English Education Department who joined Intensive Course class as the subject. They had poor motivation to speak English since English is a foreign language which is not exposed in their environment. This study used Three Communicative Activities technique in twelve successive meetings totally. It was done in two cycles (six meetings for each) since there were some activities should be improved in the first session (cycle). Oral test was administered to find the quantitative result and observation conducted to strengthen the finding. The result indicated that Three Communicative Activities improved students’ confidence in speaking English. They had significant progress in their performance in the class. The technique which allowed students to have more spaces to explore and express their ideas to their friends increased their confidence in their performance. The group or cooperative activities stimulated students to think critically in the discussion and promoted their confidence to talk more.

Keywords: students’ confidence, three communicative activities, speaking, Muria Kudus University

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Authors: Abdsalam Alahwal, Suren Pillay

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Libya saw the occurrence of violations of human rights on a large scale as well as the deterioration of the rule of law in large parts of the country after the February 17 revolution that removed the Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power in what is known upheaval of the Arab Spring. Although Libya, a country with a modern democracy, but he has declared unconstitutional temporarily allowed to exercise all the rights of political, civil and judicial, but the presence of weapons in the hands of militias list on the basis of regional, tribal and ideology was the main reason for the deterioration of the humanitarian situation as well as the foreign intervention in Libya. Where reports stressed that violations are serious committed by the conflicting parties from power after the fall of Gaddafi of assassinations and kidnapping of identity and practices related to human trafficking Some of these reports indicate that some ethnic ingredients such as Tawergha and Epiphyseal where was deliberately targeted by some militias were displacement around the city because of their allegiance to the former regime after the war ended in 2012. It is noteworthy that many of these violations and abuses committed by these militias that participated overthrow Gaddafi may rise to war crimes and crimes against humanity. That the intervention in Libya, although it had a human purpose and under the pretext of reducing the political system of human rights violations, but that the main objective, which was behind the international intervention was to overthrow the existing political system and the elimination of Muammar Gaddafi.

Keywords: Arab Spring, democracy, revolution , Libya

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Authors: Iliya Musa Adamu

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This paper seeks to develop an expert system that would troubleshoot computer network and evaluate the network system performance so as to reduce the workload on technicians and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of solutions proffered to computer network problems. The platform of the system was developed using ASP.NET, whereas the codes are implemented in Visual Basic and integrated with SQL Server 2005. The knowledge base was represented using production rule, whereas the searching method that was used in developing the network troubleshooting expert system is the forward-chaining-rule-based-system. This software tool offers the advantage of providing an immediate solution to most computer network problems encountered by computer users.

Keywords: expert system, forward chaining rule based system, network, troubleshooting

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Authors: Jordan Shuler

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The goal of this study is to determine whether real-time language translation benefits ESL learners by contributing to overall equity in the classroom. Equity will be measured quantitatively through assessment performance and qualitatively through student survey. Two separate sections of students studying the same course will receive identical curriculum: one group, the control, will be taught in English and the other group in English with real-time translation into the students' first languages. The professor will use Microsoft Translator during lectures, in-class discussions, and Q&A time. The college is committed to finding new ways of teaching and learning, as outlined in Strategy 2022. If this research finds a positive relationship between language translation and student academic success, the technology will surely be encouraged for adoption by all George Brown College faculty. With greater acceptance, this technology could influence equity and pedagogy in the larger educational community.

Keywords: ESL learners, equity, innovative teaching strategies, language translation

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Authors: Joel Niklaus, Matthias Sturmer

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The publication of judicial proceedings is a cornerstone of many democracies. It enables the court system to be made accountable by ensuring that justice is made in accordance with the laws. Equally important is privacy, as a fundamental human right (Article 12 in the Declaration of Human Rights). Therefore, it is important that the parties (especially minors, victims, or witnesses) involved in these court decisions be anonymized securely. Today, the anonymization of court decisions in Switzerland is performed either manually or semi-automatically using primitive software. While much research has been conducted on anonymization for tabular data, the literature on anonymization for unstructured text documents is thin and virtually non-existent for court decisions. In 2019, it has been shown that manual anonymization is not secure enough. In 21 of 25 attempted Swiss federal court decisions related to pharmaceutical companies, pharmaceuticals, and legal parties involved could be manually re-identified. This was achieved by linking the decisions with external databases using regular expressions. An automated re-identification system serves as an automated test for the safety of existing anonymizations and thus promotes the right to privacy. Manual anonymization is very expensive (recurring annual costs of over CHF 20M in Switzerland alone, according to an estimation). Consequently, many Swiss courts only publish a fraction of their decisions. An automated anonymization system reduces these costs substantially, further leading to more capacity for publishing court decisions much more comprehensively. For the re-identification system, topic modeling with latent dirichlet allocation is used to cluster an amount of over 500K Swiss court decisions into meaningful related categories. A comprehensive knowledge base with publicly available data (such as social media, newspapers, government documents, geographical information systems, business registers, online address books, obituary portal, web archive, etc.) is constructed to serve as an information hub for re-identifications. For the actual re-identification, a general-purpose language model is fine-tuned on the respective part of the knowledge base for each category of court decisions separately. The input to the model is the court decision to be re-identified, and the output is a probability distribution over named entities constituting possible re-identifications. For the anonymization system, named entity recognition (NER) is used to recognize the tokens that need to be anonymized. Since the focus lies on Swiss court decisions in German, a corpus for Swiss legal texts will be built for training the NER model. The recognized named entities are replaced by the category determined by the NER model and an identifier to preserve context. This work is part of an ongoing research project conducted by an interdisciplinary research consortium. Both a legal analysis and the implementation of the proposed system design ESRA will be performed within the next three years. This study introduces the system design of ESRA, an end-to-end system for re-identification and anonymization of Swiss court decisions. Firstly, the re-identification system tests the safety of existing anonymizations and thus promotes privacy. Secondly, the anonymization system substantially reduces the costs of manual anonymization of court decisions and thus introduces a more comprehensive publication practice.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, courts, legal tech, named entity recognition, natural language processing, ·privacy, topic modeling

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Authors: Laura Naka

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The invention of computer writing programs has changed the way of teaching second language writing. This artificial intelligence engine can provide students with feedback on their essays, on their grammatical and spelling errors, convenient writing and editing tools to facilitate student’s writing process. However, it is not yet proved if this technology is helping students to improve their writing skills. There are several programs that are of great assistance for students concerning their writing skills. New technology provides students with different software programs which enable them to be more creative, to express their opinions and ideas in words, pictures and sounds, but at the end main and most correct feedback should be given by their teachers. No matter how new technology affects in writing skills, always comes from their teachers. This research will try to present some of the advantages and disadvantages that new technology has in writing process for students. The research takes place in the University of Gjakova ‘’Fehmi Agani’’ Faculty of Education-Preschool Program. The research aims to provide random sample response by using questionnaires and observation.

Keywords: English language learning, technology, academic writing, teaching L2.

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Authors: Gabriel Montague, Max Vilgalys, Catherine H. Crawford, Jorge Ortiz, Dava Newman

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There has never been so much publicly accessible atmospheric and environmental data. The possibilities of these data are exciting, but the sheer volume of available datasets represents a new challenge for researchers. The task of identifying and working with a new dataset has become more difficult with the amount and variety of available data. Datasets are often documented in ways that differ substantially from the common English used to describe the same topics. This presents a barrier not only for new scientists, but for researchers looking to find comparisons across multiple datasets or specialists from other disciplines hoping to collaborate. This paper proposes a method for addressing this obstacle: creating a knowledge graph to bridge the gap between everyday English language and the technical language surrounding these datasets. Knowledge graph generation is already a well-established field, although there are some unique challenges posed by working with Earth data. One is the sheer size of the databases – it would be infeasible to replicate or analyze all the data stored by an organization like The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or the European Space Agency. Instead, this approach identifies topics from metadata available for datasets in NASA’s Earthdata database, which can then be used to directly request and access the raw data from NASA. By starting with a single metadata standard, this paper establishes an approach that can be generalized to different databases, but leaves the challenge of metadata harmonization for future work. Topics generated from the metadata are then linked to topics from a collection of English queries through a variety of standard and custom natural language processing (NLP) methods. The results from this method are then compared to a baseline of elastic search applied to the metadata. This comparison shows the benefits of the proposed knowledge graph system over existing methods, particularly in interpreting natural language queries and interpreting topics in metadata. For the research community, this work introduces an application of NLP to the ecological and environmental sciences, expanding the possibilities of how machine learning can be applied in this discipline. But perhaps more importantly, it establishes the foundation for a platform that can enable common English to access knowledge that previously required considerable effort and experience. By making this public data accessible to the full public, this work has the potential to transform environmental understanding, engagement, and action.

Keywords: earth metadata, knowledge graphs, natural language processing, question-answer systems

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Authors: Rinaldo Diricchardi

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In this paper, author theoretically and empirically explores the ethnic identity of the descendants of the Indian travelers in Slovenia Sinti, who are in modern time, for the researchers, still a "tabula rasa". He investigates the extent to which Sinti ethnic particular identities (e.g. Sinti chiefs, Sinti’s individual political structure…), the Sinti language (dialect, which is topic and it is not allowed to be spoken in public), culture and habits still in the impact of anachronism, moreover, to what extent the community is still “tabula rasa” (to non–Sinti population). The relationships within the Sinti entity: "in se–intra se" is a mirror of duality of the relation of "extra se". Is it possible that the concepts of social/economical relationships are reflecting the Sinti community, moreover, the possible influence of minority from outside to inside? Is the stratification of their ethnicity and their language ethnicism? In addition, is the result of stratification of discourse still inherited and discounted the Indian caste system? In present article, author uses the word Gypsy with high respect and with a large measure of prudentiality, without negative connotations. At the first Gypsy World Congress in 1971 in London the Sinti did not accept unification with Romani, but Sinti and others Gypsies still keep the name Gypsy/Romanichals, Gypsy/Kale, Gypsy/Manouches, Gypsy/Manoesje, Gypsy/Xoraxano, Gypsy/Machaways and Gypsy/Kalderashe. In addition, all of the European documents taken into account respect and use the name Gypsy.

Keywords: Sinti, Gypsy, identity, stratification, inclusion, exclusion

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Authors: Abdulkabir Abdullahi

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The paper is a pre-use evaluation of grammar activities in three primary English course books (two of which are international primary English course books and the other a popular Nigerian primary English course book). The titles are - Cambridge Global English, Collins International Primary English, and Nigeria Primary English – Primary English. Grammar points and grammar activities in the three-course books were identified, grouped, and evaluated. The grammar activity which was most common in the course books, simple past tense, was chosen for evaluation, and the units which present simple past tense activities were selected to evaluate the extent to which the treatment of simple past tense in each of the course books help the young learners of English as a second language in Nigeria, aged 8 – 11, level A1 to A2, who lack the basic grammatical knowledge, to know grammar/communicate effectively. A bespoke checklist was devised, through the modification of existing checklists for the purpose of the evaluation, to evaluate the extent to which the grammar activities promote the communicative effectiveness of Nigerian learners of English as a second language. The results of the evaluation and the analysis of the data reveal that the treatment of grammar, especially the treatment of the simple past tense, is evidently insufficient. While Cambridge Global English’s, and Collins International Primary English’s treatment of grammar, the simple past tense, is underpinned by state-of-the-art theories of learning, language learning theories, second language learning principles, second language curriculum-syllabus design principles, grammar learning and teaching theories, the grammar load is insignificantly low, and the grammar tasks do not promote creative grammar practice sufficiently. Nigeria Primary English – Primary English, on the other hand, treats grammar, the simple past tense, in the old-fashioned direct way. The book does not favour the communicative language teaching approach; no opportunity for learners to notice and discover grammar rules for themselves, and the book lacks the potency to promote creative grammar practice. The research and its findings, therefore, underscore the need to improve grammar contents and increase grammar activity types which engage learners effectively and promote sufficient creative grammar practice in EFL and ESL material design and development.

Keywords: evaluation, activity, second language, activity-types, creative grammar practice

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Authors: Amita Singha

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The project describes the scope of magnetic braking. The potential applications of the braking system can be a de-accelerating system to increase the safety of an elevator or any guided rail transportation system.

Keywords: boost and buck converter, electromagnet, elevator, ferromagnetic material, sensor, solenoid, timer

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Authors: Shazmeen Maroof

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The study is motivated by a desire to investigate whether there is substance to claims that, relative to traditional donors, China disregards human rights considerations when allocating overseas aid. While the stated policy of the U.S. is that consideration of potential aid recipients’ respect for human rights is mandatory, some quantitative studies have cast doubt on whether this is reflected in actual allocations. There is a lack of academic literature that formally assesses the extent to which the two countries' aid allocations differ; which is essential to test whether the criticisms of China's aid policy in comparison to that of the U.S. are justified. Using data on two standard human rights measures, 'Political Terror Scale' and 'Civil Liberties', the study analyse the two donors’ aid allocations among 125 countries over the period 2000 to 2014. The bivariate analysis demonstrated that a significant share of China’s aid flow to countries with poor human rights record. At the same time, the U.S. seems little different in providing aid to these countries. The empirical results obtained from the Fractional Logit model also provided some support to the general pessimism regarding China’s provision of aid to countries with poor human rights record, yet challenge the optimists expecting better targeted aid from the U.S. These findings are consistent with the split between humanitarian and non-humanitarian aid and in the sample of countries whose human rights record is below some threshold level.

Keywords: China's aid policy, foreign aid allocation, human rights, United States Foreign Assistance Act

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Authors: Mohammed Sabri Ali Akresh

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The modern technologies and developments in computer and Global Positioning System (GPS) as well as Geographic Information System (GIS) and total station TS. This paper presents a new proposal for coordinates system by a harmonic equations “United projections”, which have five projections (Mercator, Lambert, Russell, Lagrange, and compound of projection) in one zone coordinate system width 14 degrees, also it has one degree for overlap between zones, as well as two standards parallels for zone from 10 S to 45 S. Also this paper presents two cases; first case is to compare distances between a new coordinate system and UTM, second case creating local coordinate system for the city of Sydney to measure the distances directly from rectangular coordinates using projection of Mercator, Lambert and UTM.

Keywords: harmonic equations, coordinate system, projections, algorithms, parallels

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Authors: Abrar Ajmal

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The language used in literature reveals the culture and social gestalt of any society in which it has been constructed and consumed. This paper carries the same rationale, which aims to track certain socio-religious and cultural-economic disparities and discrepancies towards minorities, particularly Christians, in an Islamic re(public) where there is a clear majority of Muslims with the help of analysis of instances of language used in the narratives “Our Lady of Alice Bhatt” by Mohammad Hanif. It would highlight social inequalities practiced deeply in sociocultural discourse. Moreover, this research would also touch upon the question of gender discrimination and gender construction as a female entity in a male-chauvinistic scenic turnout using language since the novel revolves around communicative forfeits of Alice Bhatti’s life where she is fraying in fisticuffs to befit herself in a miss-fitted society. It would employ using Fairclough's framework for analysis to conduct a critical discourse analysis of the text at three axiom levels namely textual analysis, discursive practices, and socio-cultural analysis. Thus, the results would reveal textual findings in linguistic analysis, a range of embedded discourses in discursive practices, and consumption of the text into socio-cultural explications with the use of language and lexicalization employed in the selected excerpts.

Keywords: gendered discourse, socio-economic disparities minorities, Islamization, analytical framework

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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: Puteri Zarina M. K., Haddi J. K., Zolkepli N., Shu M. H. B., Hosshan H., Saad M. A.

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This paper provides an overview of the current state of ESL instruction for children with autism in Malaysia. Equal rights, independence, and active participation are guaranteed by the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Every child is entitled to receive education in an inclusive atmosphere that embraces diversity and ensures equal opportunity for all. The primary objective of the research was to investigate if English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers employ distinct instructional methods and strategies while teaching children diagnosed with autism. Moreover, the objective was to assess the similarities in the challenges faced by teachers when teaching ESL to children with autism in Malaysia. The study aimed to increase understanding of the challenges faced by ESL teachers in teaching autistic students. The study was structured as a qualitative research endeavour. A total of twelve (12) ESL teachers from selected primary schools in Malaysia were involved in this study. The research findings accurately depict the actual state of teaching ESL to autistic children. They confirm the imperative need for additional support in order to facilitate the successful integration of these children into the educational system.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, ESL, inclusion, Malaysia, special educational needs

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Authors: Dorota Kobus-Ostrowska

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Work for everyone, especially for person with disability is a condition in independence; it secures basic needs and develops manual and intellectual capabilities. The work is a source of income, and it builds and strengthens of self-esteem and competence. The purpose of this article is to identify work as an important factor in everyone’s life, despite Polish disabled persons rarely having the chance to undertake a job. In order to achieve this purpose, two methods were used: comparative and qualitative. The theoretical part of this article is based on studies of a wide range of Polish and foreign literature devoted to the issue of the occupational development of people with disabilities. The article was also enriched with the institutional and legal analysis types of support for people with disabilities in Poland. Currently, a Polish person with disability who wants to enter or return to the labor market is under a special protection. Those entities employing workers with disabilities may obtain a subsidy for the salary of a person with disabilities. Unfortunately, people with disability in Poland rarely participate in the workforce. The factors that contribute to this include the difficulty in obtaining work, the uncertainty of keeping it, and the low salary offered. Despite that domestic and foreign literature highlight the important role of disabled people as a workforce, very few people with disability in Poland are economically active.

Keywords: disabled person, employer, rehabilitation, work

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Authors: Kristine D. de Leon, Junifer A. Abatayo, Jose Cristina M. Pariña

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The current study is a comparative analysis of the use of shell nouns as a cohesive device (CD) in an English for Second Language (ESL) setting in order to identify their use and relationship in the quality of second language (L2) writing. As these nouns were established to anticipate the meaning within, across or outside the text, their use has fascinated writing researchers. The corpus of the study included published articles from reputable journals and graduate students’ papers in order to analyze the frequency of shell nouns using “highly prevalent” nouns in the academic community, to identify the different lexicogrammatical patterns where these nouns occur and to the functions connected with these patterns. The result of the study implies that published authors used more shell nouns in their paper than graduate students. However, the functions of the different lexicogrammatical patterns for the frequently occurring shell nouns are somewhat similar. These results could help students in enhancing the cohesion of their text and in comprehending it.

Keywords: anaphoric, cataphoric, lexico-grammatical, shell nouns

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Authors: Marc Sango, Olimpia Hoinaru, Christophe Gransart, Laurence Duchien

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Ontologies offer a means for representing and sharing information in many domains, particularly in complex domains. For example, it can be used for representing and sharing information of System Requirement Specification (SRS) of complex systems like the SRS of ERTMS/ETCS written in natural language. Since this system is a real-time and critical system, generic ontologies, such as OWL and generic ERTMS ontologies provide minimal support for modeling temporal information omnipresent in these SRS documents. To support the modeling of temporal information, one of the challenges is to enable representation of dynamic features evolving in time within a generic ontology with a minimal redesign of it. The separation of temporal information from other information can help to predict system runtime operation and to properly design and implement them. In addition, it is helpful to provide a reasoning and querying techniques to reason and query temporal information represented in the ontology in order to detect potential temporal inconsistencies. Indeed, a user operation, such as adding a new constraint on existing planning constraints can cause temporal inconsistencies, which can lead to system failures. To address this challenge, we propose a lightweight 3-layer temporal Quality of Service (QoS) ontology for representing, reasoning and querying over temporal and non-temporal information in a complex domain ontology. Representing QoS entities in separated layers can clarify the distinction between the non QoS entities and the QoS entities in an ontology. The upper generic layer of the proposed ontology provides an intuitive knowledge of domain components, specially ERTMS/ETCS components. The separation of the intermediate QoS layer from the lower QoS layer allows us to focus on specific QoS Characteristics, such as temporal or integrity characteristics. In this paper, we focus on temporal information that can be used to predict system runtime operation. To evaluate our approach, an example of the proposed domain ontology for handover operation, as well as a reasoning rule over temporal relations in this domain-specific ontology, are given.

Keywords: system requirement specification, ERTMS/ETCS, temporal ontologies, domain ontologies

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Authors: Taekyong Lee, Joon-Young Kim, Jae-Min Cha

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Piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) is an essential design drawing describing the interconnection of process equipment and the instrumentation installed to control the process. P&IDs are modified and managed throughout a whole life cycle of a process plant. For the ease of data transfer, P&IDs are generally handed over from a design company to an engineering company as portable document format (PDF) which is hard to be modified. Therefore, engineering companies have to deploy a great deal of time and human resources only for manually converting P&ID images into a computer aided design (CAD) file format. To reduce the inefficiency of the P&ID conversion, various symbols and texts in P&ID images should be automatically recognized. However, recognizing information in P&ID images is not an easy task. A P&ID image usually contains hundreds of symbol and text objects. Most objects are pretty small compared to the size of a whole image and are densely packed together. Traditional recognition methods based on geometrical features are not capable enough to recognize every elements of a P&ID image. To overcome these difficulties, state-of-the-art deep learning models, RetinaNet and connectionist text proposal network (CTPN) were used to build a system for recognizing symbols and texts in a P&ID image. Using the RetinaNet and the CTPN model carefully modified and tuned for P&ID image dataset, the developed system recognizes texts, equipment symbols, piping symbols and instrumentation symbols from an input P&ID image and save the recognition results as the pre-defined extensible markup language format. In the test using a commercial P&ID image, the P&ID information recognition system correctly recognized 97% of the symbols and 81.4% of the texts.

Keywords: object recognition system, P&ID, symbol recognition, text recognition

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Authors: Pinkey Yaqub

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The aim of this study was to investigate secondary (grades IX and X) students’ attitudes towards learning the English language based on the medium of instruction of the school, the gender of the students and the grade level in which they studied. A further aim was to determine students’ proficiency in the English language according to their gender, the grade level and the medium of instruction of the school. A survey was used to investigate the attitudes of secondary students towards English language learning. Simple random sampling was employed to obtain a representative sample of the target population for the research study as a comprehensive list of established English medium schools, and newly established English medium schools were available. A questionnaire ‘Attitude towards English Language Learning’ (AtELL) was adapted from a research study on Libyan secondary school students’ attitudes towards learning English language. AtELL was reviewed by experts (n=6) and later piloted on a representative sample of secondary students (n= 160). Subsequently, the questionnaire was modified - based on the reviewers’ feedback and lessons learnt during the piloting phase - and directly administered to students of grades 9 and 10 to gather information regarding their attitudes towards learning the English language. Data collection spanned a month and a half. As the data were not normally distributed, the researcher used Mann-Whitney tests to test the hypotheses formulated to investigate students’ attitudes towards learning English as well as proficiency in the language across the medium of instruction of the school, the gender of the students and the grade level of the respondents. Statistical analyses of the data showed that the students of established English medium schools exhibited a positive outlook towards English language learning in terms of the behavioural, cognitive and emotional aspects of attitude. A significant difference was observed in the attitudes of male and female students towards learning English where females showed a more positive attitude in terms of behavioural, cognitive and emotional aspects as compared to their male counterparts. Moreover, grade 10 students had a more positive attitude towards learning English language in terms of behavioural, cognitive and emotional aspects as compared to grade 9 students. Nonetheless, students of newly established English medium schools were more proficient in English as gauged by their examination scores in this subject as compared to their counterparts studying in established English medium schools. Moreover, female students were more proficient in English while students studying in grade 9 were less proficient in English than their seniors studying in grade 10. The findings of this research provide empirical evidence to future researchers wishing to explore the relationship between attitudes towards learning language and variables such as the medium of instruction of the school, gender and the grade level of the students. Furthermore, policymakers might revisit the English curriculum to formulate specific guidelines that promote a positive and gender-balanced outlook towards learning English for male and female students.

Keywords: attitude, behavioral aspect of attitude, cognitive aspect of attitude, emotional aspect of attitude

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Authors: Qiong Hu, Ming Yue

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Language variation signals the newest usage of language community, which might become the developmental trend of that language. The personal pronoun we is prescribed as a plural pronoun in grammar, but its number value is more flexible in actual use. Based on the homemade Friends corpus, the present research explores the number value of the first person pronoun we in nowadays American spoken English. With consideration of the subjectivity of we, this paper used ‘we+ PCU (Perception-cognation-utterance) verbs’ collocations and ‘we+ plural categories’ as the parameters. Results from corpus data and manual annotation show that: 1) the overall frequency of we has been increasing; 2) we has been increasingly used with other plural categories, indicating a weakening of its plural reference; and 3) we has been increasingly used with PCU (perception-cognition-utterance) verbs of strong subjectivity, indicating a strengthening of its singular reference. All these seem to support our hypothesis that we is undergoing the process of further grammaticalization towards a singular reference, though future evidence is needed to attest the bold prediction.

Keywords: number, PCU verbs, personal pronoun we,

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Authors: Po-Kun Tsai

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The issue of climate change is essential in the 21st century. State governments have launched types of strategic industrial policies to encourage more widespread R&D in green technology. Research also indicates that technology is an essential tool to mitigate some of extreme situations. However, one could learn from several prominent cases in international trade area that they have been easily argued and disputed by the foreign counterparts. Thus, how to justify the public sector’s R&D measures under the current world trading system and how to promote the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (EST) to developing states are crucial. The study is to undertake a preliminary examination of the current R&D research area in green technology in Taiwan. Through selective interviews and comparative approach, it tries to identify the loopholes under the current legal framework in Taiwan. It would be, as a basis, for further legal and policy recommendations for the benefits of mankind.

Keywords: government, R&D, innovation, environmentally sound technology (EST)

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Authors: Anca-Diana Bibiri, Mihaela Mocanu, Adrian Turculeț

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In a language the inventory of greetings is dynamic with frequent input and output, although this is hardly noticed by the speakers. In this register, there are a number of constant, conservative elements that survive different language models (among them, the classic formulae: bună ziua! (good afternoon!), bună seara! (good evening!), noapte bună! (good night!), la revedere! (goodbye!) and a number of items that fail to pass the test of time, according to language use at a time (ciao!, pa!, bai!). The source of innovation depends both of internal factors (contraction, conversion, combination of classic formulae of greetings), and of external ones (borrowings and calques). Their use imposes their frequencies at once, namely the elimination of the use of others. This paper presents a sociolinguistic approach of contemporary Romanian greetings, based on prosodic surveys in two research projects: AMPRom, and SoRoEs. Romanian language presents a rich inventory of questions (especially partial interrogatives questions/WH-Q) which are used as greetings, alone or, more commonly accompanying a proper greeting. The representative of the typical formulae is Ce mai faci? (How are you?), which, unlike its English counterpart How do you do?, has not become a stereotype, but retains an obvious emotional impact, while serving as a mark of sociolinguistic group. The analyzed corpus consists of structures containing greetings recorded in the main Romanian cultural (urban) centers. From the methodological point of view, the acoustic analysis of the recorded data is performed using software tools (GoldWave, Praat), identifying intonation patterns related to three sociolinguistics variables: age, sex and level of education. The intonation patterns of the analyzed statements are at the interface between partial questions and typical greetings.

Keywords: acoustic analysis, greetings, Romanian language, sociolinguistics

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