Search results for: competing discourses

Authors: Bin Liu

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Protein remote homology detection and fold recognition are two most important tasks in protein sequence analysis, which is critical for protein structure and function studies. In this study, we combined the profile-based features with various string kernels, and constructed several computational predictors for protein remote homology detection and fold recognition. Experimental results on two widely used benchmark datasets showed that these methods outperformed the competing methods, indicating that these predictors are useful computational tools for protein sequence analysis. By analyzing the discriminative features of the training models, some interesting patterns were discovered, reflecting the characteristics of protein superfamilies and folds, which are important for the researchers who are interested in finding the patterns of protein folds.

Keywords: protein remote homology detection, protein fold recognition, profile-based features, Support Vector Machines (SVMs)

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Authors: Mohammadsadegh Zanganehfar

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Since the introduction of fractal geometry in 1970, numerous efforts have been made by architects and researchers to transfer this area of mathematical knowledge in the discipline of architecture and postmodernist discourse. The discourse of complexity and architecture is one of the most significant ongoing discourses in the discipline of architecture from the '70s until today and has generated significant styles such as deconstructivism and parametrism in architecture. During these years, several projects were designed and presented by designers and architects using fractal geometry, but due to the lack of sufficient knowledge and appropriate comprehension of the features and characteristics of this nonlinear geometry, none of the fractal-based designs have been successful and satisfying. Fractal geometry as a geometric technology has a long presence in the history of architecture. The current research attempts to identify and discover the characteristics, features, potentials, and functionality of fractals despite their aesthetic aspect by examining case studies of pre-modern architecture in Asia and investigating the function of fractals.

Keywords: Asian architecture, fractal geometry, fractal technique, geometric properties

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Authors: Alicia Ettlin

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Amid the rise of neoliberalism to the leading economic policy model in Western societies in the 1980s, people have started to internalise a neoliberal way of thinking, whereby the human body has become an entity that can and needs to be precisely managed through free yet rational decision-making processes. The neoliberal citizen has consequently become an entrepreneur of the self who is free, independent, rational, productive and responsible for themselves, their health and wellbeing as well as their appearance. The focus on individuals as entrepreneurs who manage their bodies through the rationally thinking mind has, however, become increasingly criticised for viewing the social actor as ‘disembodied’, as a detached, social actor whose powerful mind governs over the passive body. On the other hand, the discourse around embodiment seeks to connect rational decision-making processes to the dominant neoliberal discourse which creates an embodied understanding that the body, just as other areas of people’s lives, can and should be shaped, monitored and managed through cognitive and rational thinking. This perspective offers an understanding of the body regarding its connections with the social environment that reaches beyond the debates around mind-body binary thinking. Hence, following this argument, body management should not be thought of as either solely guided by embodied discourses nor as merely falling into a mind-body dualism, but rather, simultaneously and inseparably as both at once. The descriptive, qualitative analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with young Australian amateur athletes between the age of 18 and 24 has shown that most participants are interested in measuring and managing their body to create self-knowledge and self-improvement. The participants thereby connected self-improvement to weight loss, muscle gain or simply staying fit and healthy. Self-knowledge refers to body measurements including weight, BMI or body fat percentage. Self-management and self-knowledge that are reliant on one another to take rational and well-thought-out decisions, are both characteristic values of the neoliberal doctrine. A neoliberal way of thinking and looking after the body has also by many been connected to rewarding themselves for their discipline, hard work or achievement of specific body management goals (e.g. eating chocolate for reaching the daily step count goal). A few participants, however, have shown resistance against these neoliberal values, and in particular, against the precise monitoring and management of the body with the help of self-tracking devices. Ultimately, however, it seems that most participants have internalised the dominant discourses around self-responsibility, and by association, a sense of duty to discipline their body in normative ways. Even those who have indicated their resistance against body work and body management practices that follow neoliberal thinking and measurement systems, are aware and have internalised the concept of the rational operating mind that needs or should decide how to look after the body in terms of health but also appearance ideals. The discussion around the collected data thereby shows that embodiment and the mind/body dualism constitute two connected, rather than two separate or opposing concepts.

Keywords: dualism, embodiment, mind, neoliberalism

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Authors: Serap Durmus

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The aim of this paper is to exemplify the relation of architecture and philosophy over the Japanese architect Toyo Ito’s conceptual architecture. The study is practiced in ‘Architecture and Philosophy Readings’ elective course with 22 sophomore architecture students in Karadeniz Technical University Department of Architecture. It is planned as a workshop, which discusses the design philosophy of Toyo Ito’s buildings and the reflections of concept in his intellectual architecture. So, the paper contains Toyo Ito’s philosophy, his discourses and buildings and also thinking similarities with philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Thus, the workshop of course is about architecture and philosophy relationship. With this aspect, a holistic graphic representation is aimed for Toyo Ito who thinks that everything composes a whole. As a result, it can be said that architect and philosopher interaction in architecture and philosophy relation supports creative thinking. Conceptual architecture of Toyo Ito has philosophical roots and his philosophy can be read over his buildings and can be represent totally via a holistic pattern.

Keywords: architecture, conceptual architecture, Gilles Deleuze, philosophy, Toyo Ito

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Authors: Fahad Ahmed Qureshi

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Is it essential for a Muslim businessperson and employees of Islamic financial institutions not only in Islamic Banks to perform his/her actions ethically in a universally, competing habitat? The answer is an emphatic NO! in Islam, ethics conduct all departments of life. The orders for eternal success or falah in Islam are the same for all Muslims–whether in managing their business activities or in carrying out their routine affairs. Without designating any circumstantial ambience, Allah specify people who achieve success as those who are “inviting to all that is good (Khayr), enjoining what is right (Ma'ruf) and forbidding what is wrong (Munkar).” Within a business context, however, what sole axioms of regimen should a company follow? What is a Muslim businessperson’s encumbrance to internal and external stakeholders? Although an organization’s top executives may display sterling ethical behavior, how can middle- and lower-level managers be enthusiastic to perform in a correspondingly ethical manner? What are some protocols that would clinch persistent ethical behavior in a Muslim business?

Keywords: business, ethics, finance, Islam

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Authors: Mi Sun Park

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Biotechnology provides us with technological solutions to resource-based challenges facing the global society. A bioeconomy or bio-based economy emerged as all economic activities derived from biotechnology. This paper aims to understand discourses on bioeconomy in the sector of agriculture with three dimensions; media discourse, science discourse, and policy discourse. For achieving research goals, content analysis was applied to this research. Media articles, academic journal articles and policy documents published from 2000 to 2016 were collected in South Korea. The text was coded and analyzed with the categories of speakers and their arguments. The research findings indicate that powerful actors and key messages of bioeconomy in South Korean agriculture. Differences and similarities among media, science, and policy were examined. Therefore this case study can contribute to understanding dynamic interaction and interfaces of media, science and policy discourse on biotechnology in the sector of agriculture.

Keywords: media, discourse, bioeconomy, agriculture

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Authors: Tapan Kumar Dhar

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How well are our city forms designed to adapt to climate change and its resulting uncertainty? What urban design tools can be used to measure and improve resilience to climate change, and how would they do so? In addressing these questions, this paper considers indeterminacy, a concept originated in the resilience literature, to measure the resilience of built environments. In the realm of urban design, ‘indeterminacy’ can be referred to as built-in design capabilities of an urban system to serve different purposes which are not necessarily predetermined. An urban system, particularly that with a higher degree of indeterminacy, can enable the system to be reorganized and changed to accommodate new or unknown functions while coping with uncertainty over time. Underlying principles of this concept have long been discussed in the urban design and planning literature, including open architecture, landscape urbanism, and flexible housing. This paper argues that the concept indeterminacy holds the potential to reduce the impacts of climate change incrementally and proactively. With regard to sustainable development, both planning and climate change literature highly recommend proactive adaptation as it involves less cost, efforts, and energy than last-minute emergency or reactive actions. Nevertheless, the concept still remains isolated from resilience and climate change adaptation discourses even though the discourses advocate the incremental transformation of a system to cope with climatic uncertainty. This paper considers indeterminacy, as an urban design tool, to measure and increase resilience (and adaptive capacity) of Long Bay’s coastal settlements in Negril, Jamaica. Negril is one of the popular tourism destinations in the Caribbean highly vulnerable to sea-level rise and its associated impacts. This paper employs empirical information obtained from direct observation and informal interviews with local people. While testing the tool, this paper deploys an urban morphology study, which includes land use patterns and the physical characteristics of urban form, including street networks, block patterns, and building footprints. The results reveal that most resorts in Long Bay are designed for pre-determined purposes and offer a little potential to use differently if needed. Additionally, Negril’s street networks are found to be rigid and have limited accessibility to different points of interest. This rigidity can expose the entire infrastructure further to extreme climatic events and also impedes recovery actions after a disaster. However, Long Bay still has room for future resilient developments in other relatively less vulnerable areas. In adapting to climate change, indeterminacy can be reached through design that achieves a balance between the degree of vulnerability and the degree of indeterminacy: the more vulnerable a place is, the more indeterminacy is useful. This paper concludes with a set of urban design typologies to increase the resilience of coastal settlements.

Keywords: climate change adaptation, resilience, sea-level rise, urban form

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Authors: Molshree A. Sharma

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As a result of globalization, it is increasingly common for people to live in different parts of the world. However there is a corresponding rise of international family law issues and competing jurisdictions. The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction is a multilateral treaty that provides an expeditious method to return a child to their country of habitual residence when ‘internationally abducted’ by a parent from one member country to another. Specifically, the Convention provides a protocol for expeditious return of the child to their habitual residence unless there is a valid exception, the most common being that return would result in an intolerable situation or cause grave risk of harm to the child. This paper analyzes case law from various signatory countries including the United States, highlighting the differences in interpretation of key terms under the Convention, as well as case law in non-Hague signatory countries, with a focus on India and the Middle East.

Keywords: best interest of the child, grave risk of harm, habitual residence, well-settled

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Authors: Nourah Almulhim

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This paper takes a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to investigate discourse and ideology in political blogs, focusing in particular on the Conservative Home blog from the UK’s current governing party. The Conservative party member’s discourse strategies as the blogger, alongside the discourse used by members of the public who reply to the blog in the below-the-lines comments, will be examined. The blog discourse reflects the writer's political identity and authorial voice. The analysis of the below-the-lines comments enables members of the public to engage in creating adversative positions, introducing different language users who bring their own individual and collective identities. These language users can play the role of news reporters, political analysts, protesters or supporters of a specific agenda and current socio-political topics or events. This study takes a qualitative approach to analyze the discriminatory context towards Islam/Muslims in ' The Conservative Home' blog. A cognitive approach is adopted and an analysis of dominant discourses in the blog text and the below-the-line comments is used. The focus of the study is, firstly, on the construction of self/ collective national identity in comparison to Muslim identity, highlighting the in-group and out-group construction. Second, the type of attitudes, whether feelings or judgments, related to these social actors as they are explicated to draw on the social values. Third, the role of discursive strategies in justifying and legitimizing those Islamophobic discriminatory practices. Therefore, the analysis is based on the systematic analysis of social actors drawing on actors, actions, and arguments to explicate identity construction and its development in the different discourses. A socio-semantic categorization of social actors is implemented to draw on the discursive strategies in addition to using literature to understand these strategies. An appraisal analysis is further used to classify attitudes and elaborate on core values in both genres. Finally, the grammar of othering is applied to explain how discriminatory dichotomies of 'Us' Vs. ''Them' actions are carried in discourse. Some of the key findings of the analysis can be summarized in two main points. First, the discursive practice used to represent Muslims/Islam as different from ‘Us’ are different in both genres as the blogger uses a covert voice while the commenters generally use an overt voice. This is to say that the blogger uses a mitigated strategy to represent the Muslim identity, for example, using the noun phrase ‘British Muslim’ but then representing them as ‘radical’ and ‘terrorists'. Contrary to this is in below the lines comments, where a direct strategy with an active declarative voice is used to negatively represent the Muslim identity as ‘oppressors’ and ‘terrorists’ with no inclusion of the noun phrase ‘British Muslims’. Second, the negotiation of the ‘British’ identity and values, such as culture and democracy, are prominent in the comment section as being unique and under threat by Muslims, while in the article, these standpoints are not represented.

Keywords: xenophobia, blogs, identity, critical discourse analysis

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Authors: Chengli Liu, C. K. M. Lee

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The tradition competitive newsvendor game assumes decision makers are rational. However, there are behavioral biases when people make decisions, such as loss aversion, mental accounting and overconfidence. Overestimation of a subject’s own performance is one type of overconfidence. The objective of this research is to analyze the impact of the overestimated demand in the newsvendor competitive game with two players. This study builds a competitive newsvendor game model where newsvendors have private information of their demands, which is overestimated. At the same time, demands of each newsvendor forecasted by a third party institution are available. This research shows that the overestimation leads to demand steal effect, which reduces the competitor’s order quantity. However, the overall supply of the product increases due to overestimation. This study illustrates the boundary condition for the overestimated newsvendor to have the equilibrium order drop due to the demand steal effect from the other newsvendor. A newsvendor who has higher critical fractile will see its equilibrium order decrease with the drop of estimation level from the other newsvendor.

Keywords: bias, competing newsvendor, Nash equilibrium, overestimation

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Authors: Maggie Shen

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Ever since the late 20th century, business giants have been competing to provide better experiences for their users. One way they strive to do so is through more efficiently connecting users with their goals, with recommendation systems that filter out unnecessary or less relevant information. Today’s top online platforms such as Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb, Tiktok, Facebook, and Google all utilize algorithmic recommender systems for different purposes—Product recommendation, movie recommendation, travel recommendation, relationship recommendation, etc. However, while bringing unprecedented convenience and efficiency, the prevalence of algorithmic recommendation systems also influences society in many ways. In using a variety of primary, secondary, and social media sources, this paper explores the impacts of algorithms, particularly algorithmic recommender systems, on different sectors of society. Four fields of interest will be specifically addressed in this paper: economy, international relations, political ideologies, and education.

Keywords: algorithms, economy, international relations, political ideologies, education

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Authors: Jafar Ahmadi

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This research has been done as a discourse analysis of the concept of citizenship in textbooks in Iran. The purpose of this study is to identify the dominant citizenship discourse in textbooks in the content of textbooks. The research method in this research is qualitative and qualitative content analysis. The statistical sample was selected in a purposeful manner and according to the research topic of books related to Persian literature, religious education and social education. The selected theoretical framework of this research is the three theories of citizenship (pre-modern, modern and postmodern). For each of these discourses, components and indicators have been extracted that are the basis of data analysis. The research findings show that the dominant citizenship discourse on the content of Iranian textbooks is pre-modern discourse and is the basis of this type of religious citizenship discourse. Finally, the findings show that the government uses the institution of education to reproduce its power.

Keywords: citizenship, textbooks, discourse analysis, religious citizenship, representation

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Authors: Ondiba Hesborn Andole, Kenichi Matsui

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Women entrepreneurs in the rural areas of Kenya have continually been affected by culturally engraved gendered bias customs. This research investigates challenges and prospects of rural women entrepreneurship in Kakamega County, Kenya. We conducted the questionnaire survey and interviews among 153 women entrepreneurs in the County to better understand how traditional norms influence them in conducting or seeking small businesses. We found that Luhya customs significantly affect growth and performance of rural women enterprises. Traditional Luhya society does not recognize women’s rights to land and higher education. The Luhya traditional roles of women are limited so that, without competing with men, they need to find gender biased works through networking activities. Also, without higher education degrees, their business prospects are limited. Among the respondents, 31% had primary education and about 5% had no formal education at all. We discuss how these women may succeed in businesses under these conditions.

Keywords: chama, culture, entrepreneurs, rural women

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Haji Babai, Sepideh Ahmadkhan Beigi

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Internationalization and modernization of the globe have played their roles in the process of cultural interaction between globalized societies and, consequently, found their way to the world of literature under the name of ‘imagology’. Imagology has made it possible for the reader to understand the author’s thoughts and judgments of others. The present research focuses on the intercultural images portrayed in the novel of a popular Turkish-French writer, Elif Shafak, about the lifestyle, traditions, habits, and social norms of Turkish, Americans, and Armenians. The novel seeks to articulate a more intricate multicultural memory of Turkishness by grieving over the Armenian massacre. This study finds that, as a mixture of multiple lifestyles and discourses, The Bastard of Istanbul reflects not only images of oriental culture but also occidental cultures. This means that the author has attempted to maintain selfhood through historical and cultural recollection, which resulted in constructing the self and another identity.

Keywords: imagology, Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul, self-image, other-image

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Authors: Klaudia Krogulec

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The concept and the meaning of safety is largely undermined in International and EU refugee law. While the Geneva Convention 1951 concentrates mainly on the principle of non-refoulment (no-return) and the idea of physical safety of refugees, countries continue to implement harmful readmission agreements that presume ‘safe countries’ for the hosting and return of the refugees. This research intends to use discourse analysis of the legal provisions and interviews with Syrian refugees, NGO workers, and refugee lawyers in Tukey to understand what ‘safety’ actually means and how law shapes the experiences of Syrians in Turkey (the country that hosts the largest population of Syrians and is a key partner of the EU-Turkey Agreement 2016). The preliminary findings reveal the competing meanings of safety (rights-based vs state interests approach). As the refugee policies continue to prioritize state interests/safety over human safety and human rights, it is extremely important to provide recommendations on how ‘safety’ should be defined in the refugee law in the future.

Keywords: human rights law, refugee law, human safety, EU-turkey agreement

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Authors: Faith G. Ehiemua, Chandra E. Ulinfun

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This work presents two approaches that use competing models to combat criminality in human trafficking. It argues that oath-taking is an approach used to combat and repress crime by natives of African descent. Therefore, certain value choices reflected explicitly or implicitly in its habitual functioning are features of crime control, a model of the criminal process used to repress and prevent crime. By pitting the approaches against each other, the work examines the utility of the purpose of each approach with the aim of assessing moral worthiness. The approaches adopted are descriptive, normative, and theoretical. The findings reveal that oath-taking is effective in human trafficking mainly because Africans believe that the African traditional system is efficient. However, the utilitarian ethical theory applied to the use of oath-taking in human trafficking shows oath-taking as protecting the interest of human traffickers against the general good of society.

Keywords: human rights, human trafficking, oath taking, utilitarianism, victim-centered approach

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Authors: Hanoch Yerushalmi

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One of the transformational therapeutic experiences is the therapeutic dyad's immersion in and recovery from shared regressive states that are often provoked by an awakened childhood fear of breakdown. the suggest that the supervisory dyad has parallel transformational experiences―the shared regressive states that follow continuous incomprehension of the unfolding therapeutic reality. Moreover, when the supervisory partners immerse themselves in a shared regressive state, a unique, inclusive, embodied, unsymbolized, and procedural understanding-without-reflection emerges spontaneously. Analytic writers describe such an understanding as unconscious knowledge, and existentialist writers describe it as prereflective consciousness. Before translating this unique understanding into a therapeutic narrative, the supervisor needs to recover from the regressive state and organize it according to discursive and logical analytic principles. From this perspective, the already existing experiential and analytic theoretical knowledge serves as a platform for creating new perceptions and analytic discourses.

Keywords: supervision, existentialism, prereflective consciousness, regressive states

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Authors: Modestus Queen

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As we know, diplomatic languages carry the political ideology and cultural stance of the country. Knowing that China's diplomatic discourse is complicated and is heavily flavored with Chinese characteristics, one of the core goals of President Xi's administration is to properly tell the story of China. This cannot be done without proper translation or interpretation of major Chinese diplomatic concepts. Therefore, this research seeks to interpret the relevance of "Yi" as used in "Zhèngquè Yì Lì Guān". The author argues that it is not enough to translate a document but that it must be properly interpreted to portray it as political, economic, cultural and diplomatic relevant to the target audience, in this case, African people. The first finding in the current study indicates that literal translation is a bad strategy, especially in Chinese diplomatic discourses. The second finding indicates that "Yi" can be used as a framework to analyze Sino-Africa relations from economic, social and political perspectives, and the third finding indicates that "Yi" is the guiding principle of China's foreign policy towards Africa.

Keywords: Yi, justice, China-Africa, interpretation, diplomatic discourse, discourse reconstruction

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Authors: Jingxian An, Wei Yu

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Australia and New Zealand are neighboring countries in the New World wine industry, and their Pinot Noir wines have gained both production and reputation in recent years, competing in the international market. Consumer perception is heavily influenced by wine expertise, which plays a significant role in shaping their perceptions. This study aims to investigate the effects of country of origin and wine expertise on consumer perceptions. The results indicate that consumers' perceptions of Pinot Noir wines' astringency, sourness, sweetness, clarity, and bitterness are impacted by both country of origin and wine expertise. Of the five sensory attributes, sourness was found to have a more significant influence on consumer perceptions, while clarity had a minimal impact. Additionally, the study found that the country of origin had a greater impact on consumer perceptions than wine expertise.

Keywords: Australia, country of origin, consumer perception, New Zealand, wine expertise

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Authors: Aysha Alshehri

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This paper provides a literature review of the sources of women’s rights under the Saudi legal framework, taking account of the constitutional primacy of Sharia under the Saudi legal system as well as the state’s obligations under international law. Building on one of the central aims of the paper, it conducts an exploration of how Saudi Arabia already has or might be further able to more clearly delineate its position and reservations in the adoptions of international human rights agreements while preserving its core religious beliefs and societal practices in regard to women’s rights at the domestic level. In this regard, the paper will consider the apparent tension between certain jurisprudential and customary aspects on gender equality and contemporary discourses of women’s rights from within and outside the Muslim world. Particular attention will be devoted to the question of the causes behind the lack of direct application of women’s rights mentioned by international reports and any challenges this may bring in the contexts of Saudi Arabia’s evolving gender equality policies.

Keywords: Islamic Constitution, executive actions, gender equality, judicial review

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Authors: Samba Raju, Chiluveru, Manoj Tripathy

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Intelligibility is an essential characteristic of a speech signal, which is used to help in the understanding of information in speech signal. Background noise in the environment can deteriorate the intelligibility of a recorded speech. In this paper, we presented a simple variance subtracted - variable level discrete wavelet transform, which improve the intelligibility of speech. The proposed algorithm does not require an explicit estimation of noise, i.e., prior knowledge of the noise; hence, it is easy to implement, and it reduces the computational burden. The proposed algorithm decides a separate decomposition level for each frame based on signal dominant and dominant noise criteria. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with speech intelligibility measure (STOI), and results obtained are compared with Universal Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) thresholding and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) methods. The experimental results revealed that the proposed scheme outperformed competing methods

Keywords: discrete wavelet transform, speech intelligibility, STOI, standard deviation

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Authors: Adriana Pereira Arteaga

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In many Latin American countries the transition towards legal pluralism - has developed as part of what is called Latin-American-Constitutionalism over the last thirty years. The aim of this paper is to discuss how legal pluralism in its current form in Bolivia may produce exclusion and violence. Legal sources and discourse analysis - as an approach to examine written language on discourse documentation- will be used to develop this paper. With the constitution of 2009, Bolivia was symbolically "re-founded" into a multi-nation state. This shift goes hand in hand with the "indigenista" and "decolonisation" ideologies developing since the early 20th century. Discourses based on these ideologies reflect the rejection of liberal and western premises on which the Bolivian republic was originally built after independence. According to the "indigenista" movements, the liberal nation-state generates institutions corresponding to a homogenous society. These liberal institutions not only ignore the Bolivian multi-nation reality, but also maintain the social structures originating form the colony times, based on prejudices against the indigenous. The described statements were elaborated through the image: the indigenous people humiliated by a cruel western system as highlighted by the constitution's preamble. This narrative had a considerable impact on the sensitivity of people and received great social support. Therefore the proposal for changing structures of the nation-state, is charged with an emancipatory message of restoring even the pre-Columbian order. An order at times romantically described as the perfect order. Legally this connotes a rejection of the positivistic national legal system based on individual rights and the promotion of constitutional recognition of indigenous justice administration. The pluralistic Constitution is supposed to promote tolerance and a peaceful coexistence among nations, so that the unity and integrity of the country could be maintained. In its current form, legal pluralism in Bolivia is justified on pre-existing rights contained for example in the International - Labour - Organization - Convention 169, but it is more developed on the described discursive constructions. Over time these discursive constructions created inconsistencies in terms of putting indigenous justice administration into practice: First, because legal pluralism has been more developed on level of political discourse, so a real interaction between the national and the indigenous jurisdiction cannot be observed. There are no clear coordination and cooperation mechanisms. Second, since the recently reformed constitution is based on deep sensitive experiences, little is said about the general legal principles on which a pluralistic administration of justice in Bolivia should be based. Third, basic rights, liberties, and constitutional guarantees are also affected by the antagonized image of the national justice administration. As a result, fundamental rights could be violated on a large scale because many indigenous justice administration practices run counter to these constitutional rules. These problems are not merely Bolivian but may also be encountered in other regional countries with similar backgrounds, like Ecuador.

Keywords: discourse, indigenous justice, legal pluralism, multi-nation

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Authors: Muriel Canas-Walker

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The 2012 TV series "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is one of the most popular and influential historical dramas on Chinese television and is regularly discussed on Chinese social media such as Weibo. Set in the Qing dynasty, the 76 episodes series features palace intrigues focused on female characters. In the Forbidden City, concubines must survive the cruelty of an extreme polygamy system, constantly competing against each other. The patriarchal oppression of the women sequestred in the harem relies on fierce female competition and does not leave much room for compassion. Using Michel Foucault’s theory of power, feminist theories, and visual anthropology, this paper analyzes the complex relationships between the female characters, from their rise to power to their fall from grace, from alliances to betrayals, from sorority to sororicide. This analysis aims to understand what makes this series particularly popular with young female audiences in China and explain its importance in Chinese media.

Keywords: Chinese TV Drama, feminism, popular culture, Theory of Power

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Authors: Todd G. Morrison, C. J. Bishop, Melanie A. Morrison

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An upsurge of hatred directed at sexual- and gender-marginalized persons (SGMPs) has been documented in numerous Western nations. The denial of gender-affirmative care for trans youth; the banning of books containing queer content (no matter how innocuous); the boycotting of products affiliated with queer influencers and with pride celebrations; and the silencing of sexual- and gender-marginalized teachers and academics (and their allies) constitute key ways in which this hatred now manifests itself. The health consequences for SGMPs living in environments characterized by hatred of queer people include elevated rates of depression, anxiety, suicidality, and substance misuse. Given these sequelae, in this paper, the authors outline the challenges that academics experience when adopting an advocacy role. The authors also provide an overview of specific strategies that SGMPs may find helpful when engaging with persons committed to harming queer people.

Keywords: queer people, resistance, minority rights, hate speech

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Authors: Mostafa ‘Neo’ Mohsenvand, Mohammad Rasool Izadi, Pattie Maes

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EEG-based biometrics (user identification) has been explored on small datasets of no more than 157 subjects. Here we show that the accuracy of modern supervised methods falls rapidly as the number of users increases to a few thousand. Moreover, supervised methods require a large amount of labeled data for training which limits their applications in real-world scenarios where acquiring data for training should not take more than a few minutes. We show that using contrastive learning for pre-training, it is possible to maintain high accuracy on a dataset of 2130 subjects while only using a fraction of labels. We compare 5 different self-supervised tasks for pre-training of the encoder where our proposed method achieves the accuracy of 96.4%, improving the baseline supervised models by 22.75% and the competing self-supervised model by 3.93%. We also study the effects of the length of the signal and the number of channels on the accuracy of the user-identification models. Our results reveal that signals from temporal and frontal channels contain more identifying features compared to other channels.

Keywords: brainprint, contrastive learning, electroencephalo-gram, self-supervised learning, user identification

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Authors: Marina Gold, Yves Jackson, David Parrat

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The high predominance of Latin American migrants in Geneva from countries where Chagas disease is endemic (Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia) is increasing the incidence of chronic Chagas-related problems, especially cardiovascular complications. The precarious migratory status of what are mostly undocumented migrants complicates access to health and affects patients’ and doctors’ health perceptions regarding screening, treatment and monitoring of Chagas-related health concerns. This project results from a 3 year collaboration between the Geneva University Hospital and the NGO Mundo Sano to understand the following questions: 1) how do Latin American migrants perceive their health? 2) What do they understand from Chagas disease? 3) Are patients’ and doctors’ health perceptions similar or do they have competing agendas? This paper aims to present the results of a long-term study that interrogates health perceptions among Latin American migrants in Geneva. The first phase consisted in completing surveys at three community screening events (2016, 2017. 2018), and the results of these surveys reveal the subordination of the importance of health to that of having met economic family obligation. That is, health is important only when it becomes an impediment to economic gain. The contradictory result emerged that people are aware of the importance of health prevention in order to ensure long-term health, but they do not always have agency over their life-style habits (healthy food, regular exercise, emotional stability). The second phase of the research collected open-ended interviews with selected participants, in order to explore in more detail how Latin American migrants deal with Chagas in a different socio-political and economic context to that of endemic countries. These interviews (5 in total) reveal mixed methods of managing health: social networks, access to health care transnationally (in Geneva, Spain and back in their home country), and different valuations of health problems in each situation. The third phase consisted in observations of doctor-patient consultations and further extended interviews with patients to determine doctor/patient health perceptions around Chagas disease. This phase is ongoing, but it has yielded preliminarily observations regarding the expectations that patients’ have of doctors, and the understanding of doctors’ to patients’ complex situations. Positive and complementary health perceptions include patients’ feeling that doctors in Geneva are more understanding, more knowledgeable and less racist than those in their home country, who do not provide detailed information about Chagas or its treatment and discriminate against them for being indigenous or from poor rural areas, enabling a better communication between doctors and patients. Possible conflicting health perceptions include patients addressing their health concerns more holistically and encountering the specialist’s limitations to only treating one health concern, given time limitations and lack of competition with their colleagues (the general practitioner that referred the patient, for example). The implications of this study extend the case of Chagas disease in Geneva and is relevant for all chronic concerns and migratory contexts of precarity.

Keywords: chagas disease, health perceptions, Latin American Migrants, non-endemic countries

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Authors: Mohadese Oghbaee, Borna Firouzi

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The emergence of the Internet and more specifically the formation of social media has provided the ground for paying attention to new types of content dissemination. In recent years, Social media users share information, communicate with others, and exchange opinions on social events in this space. Many of the information published in this space are suspicious and produced with the intention of deceiving others. These contents are often called "fake news". Fake news, by disrupting the circulation of the concept and similar concepts such as fake news with correct information and misleading public opinion, has the ability to endanger the security of countries and deprive the audience of the basic right of free access to real information; Competing governments, opposition elements, profit-seeking individuals and even competing organizations, knowing about this capacity, act to distort and overturn the facts in the virtual space of the target countries and communities on a large scale and influence public opinion towards their goals. This process of extensive de-truthing of the information space of the societies has created a wave of harm and worries all over the world. The formation of these concerns has led to the opening of a new path of research for the timely containment and reduction of the destructive effects of fake news on public opinion. In addition, the expansion of this phenomenon has the potential to create serious and important problems for societies, and its impact on events such as the 2016 American elections, Brexit, 2017 French elections, 2019 Indian elections, etc., has caused concerns and led to the adoption of approaches It has been dealt with. In recent years, a simple look at the growth trend of research in "Scopus" shows an increasing increase in research with the keyword "false information", which reached its peak in 2020, namely 524 cases, reached, while in 2015, only 30 scientific-research contents were published in this field. Considering that one of the capabilities of social media is to create a context for the dissemination of news and information, both true and false, in this article, the classification of strategies for spreading fake news in social networks was investigated in social events. To achieve this goal, thematic analysis research method was chosen. In this way, an extensive library study was first conducted in global sources. Then, an in-depth interview was conducted with 18 well-known specialists and experts in the field of news and media in Iran. These experts were selected by purposeful sampling. Then by analyzing the data using the theme analysis method, strategies were obtained; The strategies achieved so far (research is in progress) include unrealistically strengthening/weakening the speed and content of the event, stimulating psycho-media movements, targeting emotional audiences such as women, teenagers and young people, strengthening public hatred, calling the reaction legitimate/illegitimate. events, incitement to physical conflict, simplification of violent protests and targeted publication of images and interviews were introduced.

Keywords: fake news, social network, social events, thematic analysis

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Authors: Siphiwe P. Mandina, Tinashe Shamuyashe

Abstract:

Tourism has become a topical issue amongst academics and practitioners due to its potential to contribute significantly towards an economy’s GDP. The problem underpinning this research is the fact that the major attraction, Victoria Falls, is being marketed in neighboring countries like South Africa, Botswana and Zambia with tour operators providing just day trips to the Victoria Falls. This has deprived Zimbabwe of income from tourism with tourists making day trips and actually not spending nights in Zimbabwe. This therefore calls for cutting edge marketing strategies that are superior to or inimitable by competing nations such as South Africa and Zambia. This study proposes a shift towards an experience management paradigm in the tourism sector. A qualitative research was adopted for this study, and findings of this study were generalized across different tourism contexts, therefore making the survey based research design more appropriate. The target population for this study is tourists visiting Zimbabwe over the period 2016 and ZTA visitor database acquired from the Department of Immigration will form the sampling frame for the purposes of this study.

Keywords: tourist experiences, Zimbabwe, tourist arrivals, competitiveness

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Authors: Owolabi Kolade Matthew

Abstract:

In this work, we investigate both the analytical and numerical studies of the dynamical model comprising of three species system. We analyze the linear stability of stationary solutions in the one-dimensional multi-system modeling the interactions of two predators and one prey species. The stability analysis has a lot of implications for understanding the various spatiotemporal and chaotic behaviors of the species in the spatial domain. The analysis results presented have established the possibility of the three interacting species to coexist harmoniously, this feat is achieved by combining the local and global analyzes to determine the global dynamics of the system. In the presence of diffusion, a viable exponential time differencing method is applied to multi-species nonlinear time-dependent partial differential equation to address the points and queries that may naturally arise. The scheme is described in detail, and justified by a number of computational experiments.

Keywords: asymptotically stable, coexistence, exponential time differencing method, global and local stability, predator-prey model, nonlinear, reaction-diffusion system

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Authors: Lhoussain Simour

Abstract:

This paper discusses the reordering and reorientation Moroccan Oossified and frozen histories in national and colonial archives. It attempts to reexamine Moroccan non-canonical voices beyond borders, their forgotten experiences and itineraries, with the aim of uncovering cultural discourses pertaining to early cultural and artistic interactions between Morocco and the western countries, namely Britain and America. In fact, less attention has been given to the presence of Moroccan entertainers beyond borders in the archives of history. Moroccan historians and cultural critics seem to have paid little critical consideration to Moroccan artistic encounters with the west, Europe and America as a case in point. They have overlooked to deal with travel performances, professional entertainments, and artistic spectacles, initiated by acrobats, as instances of visual cross-cultural encounters between Morocco and the west. The narratives of these professional artists have hardly found their ways into historiographical writing. This contribution attempts to locate the contesting beginnings of Moroccan professional entertainers in western show business in the nineteenth century which witnessed intricate artistic, discursive and cultural junctures by emphasizing connections between theatrical performances, ethnic exhibition and world fair expositions. Moroccan professional performances grew in Europe and America within a zealous context marked by the rise of a paradigmatic racial consciousness that sought to authenticate and legitimate ethnic discourses of power and exclusion. The ethnic taxonomies and racial hierarchies governed by ethnographic and anthropological documentation fueled up entertainment venues and popular theatrical performances and helped in developing a distinctive view about Self and Other paradigms. Moroccan travelers started their journeys to visit European and American countries to exhibit their acrobatics acts. They, in a certain sense, continued, albeit in varying degrees and circumstances, the whole tradition of travel initiated previously by their ancestor diplomats and ambassadors. Professional entertainers embarked on daring journeys across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to discover new geographies and cultural spaces, and perform their spectacles beyond borders. These travelers left rich archival documents that reflect important cultural and historical moments. The routes of travel started from the margins of the empire towards metropolitan centers of nineteenth century Europe and America included Moroccan women travelers as acrobats and dancing professional artists as well. These also crossed the straits of Gibraltar and journeyed through the Atlantic Ocean to visit western countries. Moroccan women travelers took part in various Euro-American theatre performances and in circus shows as early as 1850 according to newspapers archives and passengers shipping lists. Najat Amburg, Zahar Ben Tahar, Torquia, Fadma, and many more whose names are now lost to us, moved freely in various western capital cities to entertain nineteenth century western audiences.

Keywords: archives, cultural encounters, self and other, Morocco, travel, Moroccan acrobats, Moorish dancing women

Procedia PDF Downloads 172