Search results for: fictional characters
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 553

Search results for: fictional characters

313 Gas Separation Membranes Using Stability Improved Ion Gels

Authors: Y. H. Hwang, J. Won, Y. S. Kang

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Since ionic liquids have a special interaction with gas specially CO2 and/or olefin, supported ionic liquids membrane (SILM) are fabricated for practical gas separation. However, SILM has a problem in practical application due to the low mechanical stability under high pressure for gas separation. In order to improve the mechanical strength of the selective ionic liquid layer, we prepared supported ion gel membrane by the formation of gel on the surface of Nylon support. The ion gel was prepared by the addition of poly(styrene-block-ethyleneoxide-block-styrene) triblock copolymer in four tricyanomethanide ionic liquids have different cation; 1-ethyl-3-methlyimidazolium tricyanomethanide, 1-butyl-3-methlyimidazolium tricyanomethanide, 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium tricyanomethanide, 1-butyl-4-methylpyridinium tricyanomethanide using methylenechloride as a solvent. The characters of ion gel with different cation were studied. Four different gases (CO2, N2, O2, and CH4) permeance were measured at room temperature by bubble flow meter and cation effect of tricyanomethanide ionic liquids investigated.

Keywords: membrane, ionic liquid, ion gel, nanostructure

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312 Third Super-Harmonic Resonance in Vortex-Induced Vibration of a Pipeline Close to the Seabed

Authors: Yiming Jin, Ping Dong

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The third super-harmonic resonance of a pipeline close to the seabed is investigated in this paper. To analyse the vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of the pipeline close to the seabed, the classic Van der Pol equation is extended with a nonlinear item. Then, on the base of the multi-scale method, the frequency-response curves of the pipeline with regard to the third super-harmonic resonance are studied with a series of parameters, such as the mass ratio, frequency, damp ratio and gap ratio. On the whole, the numerical results show that the characters of third super-harmonic resonance are quite from that of primary resonance, though with the same trend that the larger is the mass ratio, the smaller impact the gap ratio has on the frequency-response curves of the third super-harmonic resonance.

Keywords: the third super-harmonic resonance, gap ratio, vortex-induced vibration, multi-scale method

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311 Gendering the Political Crisis in Hong Kong: A Cultural Analysis of Spectatorship on Marvel Superhero Movies in Hong Kong

Authors: Chi S. Lee

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Marvel superhero movies have obtained its unprecedented popularity around the globe. It is a dominant narrative in current scholarship on superhero studies that the political trauma of America, such as attack of September 11, and the masculinity represented in superhero genre are symbolically connected in a way of remasculinization, a standardized plot that before becoming a superhero, a man has to overcome its trauma in his life. Through this standardized plot, American audience finds their pleasure in the spectatorship of equating this plot of remasculinization with the situation of America, rewriting their traumatic memory and resolving around the economic, social, political, and psychological instability of precarity in their own context. Shifting the context to Hong Kong, where Marvel superhero movies have been reaching its dominant status in the local film market, this analysis finds its limitation in explaining the connection between text and context. This article aims to retain this connection through investigation of the Hong Kong audience’s spectatorship. It is argued that the masculinity represented in Marvel superhero movies no longer fits into the stereotypical image of superhero, but presents itself in crisis. This crisis is resolved by the technological excess of the superpower, namely, technological remasculinization. The technological remasculinization offers a sense of futurity through which it is felt that this remasculinization can be achieved in the foreseeable future instead of remaining imaginary and fictional. In this way, the political crisis of Hong Kong is gendered as masculinity in crisis which is worth being remasculinized in the future. This gendering process is a historical product as the symbolic equation between politics and masculinity has for long been encoded in the colonial history of Hong Kong. In short, Marvel superhero’s masculinity offers a sense of masculine hope for the Hong Kong audiences to overcome the political crisis they confront in reality through a postponed identification with the superhero’s masculinity. After the discussion of the Hong Kong audience’s spectatorship on Marvel superhero movies with the insights casted by spectatorship theory, above idea is generated.

Keywords: political crisis in Hong Kong, Marvel superhero movies, spectatorship, technological remasculinization

Procedia PDF Downloads 257
310 Recognition of Grocery Products in Images Captured by Cellular Phones

Authors: Farshideh Einsele, Hassan Foroosh

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In this paper, we present a robust algorithm to recognize extracted text from grocery product images captured by mobile phone cameras. Recognition of such text is challenging since text in grocery product images varies in its size, orientation, style, illumination, and can suffer from perspective distortion. Pre-processing is performed to make the characters scale and rotation invariant. Since text degradations can not be appropriately defined using wellknown geometric transformations such as translation, rotation, affine transformation and shearing, we use the whole character black pixels as our feature vector. Classification is performed with minimum distance classifier using the maximum likelihood criterion, which delivers very promising Character Recognition Rate (CRR) of 89%. We achieve considerably higher Word Recognition Rate (WRR) of 99% when using lower level linguistic knowledge about product words during the recognition process.

Keywords: camera-based OCR, feature extraction, document, image processing, grocery products

Procedia PDF Downloads 375
309 The Potential of Digital Tools in Art Lessons at Junior School Level to Improve Artistic Ability Using Tamazight Fonts

Authors: Aber Salem Aboalgasm, Rupert Ward

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The aim of this research is to explore how pupils in art classes can use creative digital art tools to redesign Tamazight fonts, in order to develop children’s artistic creativity, enable them to learn about a new culture, and to help the teacher assess the creativity of pupils in the art class. It can also help students to improve their talents in drawing. The study could relate to research in Libya among the Amazigh people (better known as Berber) and possibly the development of Tamazight fonts with new uses in art. The research involved students aged 9-10 years old working with digital art tools, and was designed to explore the potential of digital technology by discovering suitable tools and techniques to develop children’s artistic performance using Tamazight fonts. The project also sought to show the aesthetic aspects of these characters and to stimulate the artistic creativity of these young people.

Keywords: artistic creativity, Tamazight fonts, technology acceptance model, traditional, digital art tools

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308 The Rock Paintings and Engravings of Kabylia Region (Algeria): Sites of Azru Imeyazen (Tarihant)

Authors: Samia Ait Ali Yahia

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Rock paintings and engravings in the Kabylia region of Algeria have been extensively studied, with 54 sites identified. These artworks were primarily discovered by Poyto and Musso in the mid-1960s. The paintings are predominantly adorned with red ochre ornaments, while some engravings can also be found on sandstone rocks. These artistic expressions can be found in various locations, such as shelters, rocks, and sandstone blocks in the northern part of Kabylia. These sites showcase a diverse range of decorations, including human figures, animal silhouettes, enigmatic designs, symbolic drawings, engravings, and Libyan characters. The research will involve conducting fieldwork at the Azru Imeyazen site to identify and study the different paintings and engravings present. This research aims to provide a detailed description of the rock paintings and engravings found in Kabylia, specifically focusing on the Azru Imeyazen (Tarihant) site.

Keywords: rock paintings, engraving, Kabylia, Tarihant, Azru Imayazen

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307 Effect of Three Sand Types on Potato Vegetative Growth and Yield

Authors: Shatha A. Yousif, Qasim M. Zamil, Hasan Y. Al Muhi, Jamal A. Al Shammari

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Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the major vegetable crops that are grown world wide because of its economic importance. This experiment investigated the effect of local sands (River Base, Al-Ekader and Karbala) on number and total weight of mini tubers. Statistical analysis revealed that there were no significant differences among sand cultures in number of stem/plant, chlorophyll index and tubers dry weight. River Base sand had the highest plant height (74.9 cm), leaf number/plant number (39.3), leaf area (84.4 dcm2⁄plant), dry weight/plant (26.31), tubers number/plant (8.5), tubers weight/plant (635.53 gm) and potato tuber yields/trove (28.60 kg), whereas the Karbala sand had lower performance. All the characters had positive and significant correlation with yields except the traits number of stem and tuber dry weight.

Keywords: correlation, potato, sand culture, yield

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306 The Semiosis of 'We' Narrative: Examining Collectivity in Tahrir Memoir

Authors: May Al Sahib

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This paper draws together an analysis of two autobiographical writings; Ahdaf Soueif’s Cairo: My City, Our Revolution (2012), Radwa Ashour’s Heavier than Radwa (2013), and Revolution is My Name: An Egyptian Woman’s Diary from Eighteen Days in Tahrir (2015). Soueif, Ashour, and Prince are Egyptian authors, activists, and cultural commentators who are fully aware that being a ‘third world’ citizen constrains the writer into taking a specific pattern in writing. However, this paper will analyze the choice of literary form in writing the 2011 January revolution. All texts give factual accounts of the revolution with all its contesting powers lingering with mixed references of anxiety and merriment that accentuates their sense of communal solidarity against social corruption and political positioning. Through shifting between the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’, these narratives do not solely engage with the personal life of the memorialist; but rather give an account of the collective. Both writers take us to the heart of high-spirited Tahrir Square in 2011 while millions are ranting to oust Hosni Mubarak, the 30 years ruling dictator. By utilizing the instrumentality of collective memory for expressing textual collectivity in their non-fictional writings, these writers are depicting the people power of Egyptians and the historical civil-resistance against governmental unfairness and establishing a certain type of patriotism that elevates and priorities itself from minor conflicts. Their de-individualizing type of life narrative represents the Arabic nation through vital socio-political situations that perpetuate the politics of resistance and collectivity with a constant fear of betraying it and erupts historical moments aiming for an improved future. The texts incorporate an explicit set of reported political series of thought that shape an overall public argument and representational ideas.

Keywords: resistance narrative, life-writing, Tahrir memoir, Middle Eastern literature

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305 Switching to the Latin Alphabet in Kazakhstan: A Brief Overview of Character Recognition Methods

Authors: Ainagul Yermekova, Liudmila Goncharenko, Ali Baghirzade, Sergey Sybachin

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In this article, we address the problem of Kazakhstan's transition to the Latin alphabet. The transition process started in 2017 and is scheduled to be completed in 2025. In connection with these events, the problem of recognizing the characters of the new alphabet is raised. Well-known character recognition programs such as ABBYY FineReader, FormReader, MyScript Stylus did not recognize specific Kazakh letters that were used in Cyrillic. The author tries to give an assessment of the well-known method of character recognition that could be in demand as part of the country's transition to the Latin alphabet. Three methods of character recognition: template, structured, and feature-based, are considered through the algorithms of operation. At the end of the article, a general conclusion is made about the possibility of applying a certain method to a particular recognition process: for example, in the process of population census, recognition of typographic text in Latin, or recognition of photos of car numbers, store signs, etc.

Keywords: text detection, template method, recognition algorithm, structured method, feature method

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304 Incorporating Information Gain in Regular Expressions Based Classifiers

Authors: Rosa L. Figueroa, Christopher A. Flores, Qing Zeng-Treitler

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A regular expression consists of sequence characters which allow describing a text path. Usually, in clinical research, regular expressions are manually created by programmers together with domain experts. Lately, there have been several efforts to investigate how to generate them automatically. This article presents a text classification algorithm based on regexes. The algorithm named REX was designed, and then, implemented as a simplified method to create regexes to classify Spanish text automatically. In order to classify ambiguous cases, such as, when multiple labels are assigned to a testing example, REX includes an information gain method Two sets of data were used to evaluate the algorithm’s effectiveness in clinical text classification tasks. The results indicate that the regular expression based classifier proposed in this work performs statically better regarding accuracy and F-measure than Support Vector Machine and Naïve Bayes for both datasets.

Keywords: information gain, regular expressions, smith-waterman algorithm, text classification

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303 Influence of Tactile Symbol Size on Its Perceptibility in Consideration of Effect of Aging

Authors: T. Nishimura, K. Doi, H. Fujimoto, T. Wada

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We conducted perception experiments on tactile symbols to elucidate the impact of the size of these letters on the level of perceptibility. This study was based on the accessible design perspective and aimed at expanding the availability of tactile symbols for the visually impaired who are unable to read Braille characters. In particular, this study targeted people with acquired visual impairments as users of the tactile symbols. The subjects (young and elderly individuals) in this study had normal vision. They were asked to participate in the experiments to identify tactile symbols while unable to see their hand during the experiments. This study investigated the relation between the size and perceptibility of tactile symbols based on an examination using test pieces of these letters in different sizes. The results revealed that the error rates for both young and elderly subjects converged to almost 0% when 12 mm size tactile symbols were used. The findings also showed that the error rate was low and subjects could identify the symbols in 5 s when 16 mm size tactile symbols were introduced.

Keywords: accessible design, tactile sense, tactile symbols, bioinformatic

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302 Research of Street Aspect Ratio on a Wind Environmental Perspective

Authors: Qi Kan, Xiaoyu Ying

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With a rapid urbanization in China, the high-density new urban-center districts have already changed the microclimate in the city. Because of the using characters of building the commercial pedestrian streets which have emerged massively making a large number of pedestrians appear in there, pedestrian comfort in the commercial streets of the new urban-center districts requires more attention. The different street spatial layout will change the wind environment in the street and then influence the pedestrian comfort. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are used to study the correlation between the street aspect ratio and wind environment, under the simulation with relevant weather conditions. The results show that the wind speed in the city streets is inversely proportional to the street aspect ratio. The conclusion will provide an evaluation basis for urban planners and architects at the beginning stage of the design to effectively avoid the potential poor physical environment.

Keywords: street spatial layout, wind environment, street aspect ratio, pedestrian comfort

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301 Easily Memorable Strong Password Generation and Retrieval

Authors: Shatadru Das, Natarajan Vijayarangan

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In this paper, a system and method for generating and recovering an authorization code has been designed and analyzed. The system creates an authorization code by accepting a base-sentence from a user. Based on the characters present in this base-sentence, the system computes a base-sentence matrix. The system also generates a plurality of patterns. The user can either select the pattern from the multiple patterns suggested by the system or can create his/her own pattern. The system then performs multiplications between the base-sentence matrix and the selected pattern matrix at different stages in the path forward, for obtaining a strong authorization code. In case the user forgets the base sentence, the system has a provision to manage and retrieve 'forgotten authorization code'. This is done by fragmenting the base sentence into different matrices and storing the fragmented matrices into a repository after computing matrix multiplication with a security question-answer approach and with a secret key provided by the user.

Keywords: easy authentication, key retrieval, memorable passwords, strong password generation

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300 Emotional Characteristics of Preschoolers Due to Parameters of Family Interaction

Authors: Nadezda Sergunicheva, Victoria Vasilenko

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The emotional sphere is one of the most important aspects of the child's development and significant factor in his psychological well-being. Present research aims to identify the relationships between emotional characteristics of preschoolers and parameters of family interaction: emotional interaction, parental styles, family adaptation, and cohesion. The study involved 40 people from Saint-Petersburg: 20 children (10 boys and 10 girls) from 5 to 6 years, Mage = 5 years 4 months and 20 mothers. Methods used were: Test 'Emotional identification' by E.Izotova, Empathy test by T. Gavrilova, Children's fears test by A. Zakharov, M. Panfilova, 'Parent-child emotional interaction questionnaire' by E. Zakharova, 'Analysis of family relationships questionnaire by E. Eidemiller and V. Yustitskis, Family Adaptation and Cohesion Scales (FACES III) by D. X. Olson, J. Portner, I. Lavi. Сorrelation analysis revealed that the higher index of underdevelopment of parental feelings, the lower the child’s ability to identify emotions (p < 0,05), but at the same time, the higher ability to understand emotional states (p < 0,01), as in the case of hypoprotection (p < 0,05). Two last correlations can be explained by compensatory mechanism. This is also confirmed by negative correlations between maternal educational uncertainty and child’s ability to understand emotional states and between indulgence and child’s ability to perceive emotional states (p < 0,05). The more pronounced the phobia of a child's loss, the higher egocentric nature of child’s empathy (p < 0,05). The child’s fears have the greatest number of relationships with the characteristics of family interaction. The more pronounced mother’s positive feelings in interaction, emotional support, acceptance of himself as a parent, desire for physical contact with child and the more adaptive the family system, the less the total number of child’s fears (p < 0,05). The more the mother's ability to perceive the child's state, positive feelings in interaction, emotional support (p < 0,01), unconditional acceptance of the child, acceptance of himself as a parent and the desire for physical contact (p < 0,05), the less the amount child’s spatial fears. Socially-mediated fears are associated with less pronounced mother's positive feelings in interaction, less emotional support and deficiency of demands, obligations (p < 0,05). Fears of animals and fairy-tale characters positively correlated with the excessive demands, obligations and excessive sanctions (p < 0,05). The more emotional support (p < 0,01), mother's ability to perceive the child's state, positive feelings in interaction, unconditional acceptance of the child, acceptance of himself as a parent (p < 0,05), the less the amount child’s fears of nightmares. This kind of fears is positively correlated with excessive demands, prohibitions (p < 0,05). The more adaptive the family system (p < 0,01), the higher family cohesion, mother's acceptance of himself as a parent and preference to childish traits (p < 0,05), the less fear of death. Thus, the children's fears have the closest relationships with the characteristics of family interaction. The severity of fears, especially spatial, is connected, first of all, with the emotional side of the mother-parent interaction. Fears of animals and fairy-tale characters are associated with some characteristics of the parental styles, connected with the rigor of mothers. Correlations of the emotional identification are contradictory and require further clarification. Research is supported by RFBR №18-013-00990.

Keywords: emotional characteristics, family interaction, fears, parental styles, preschoolers

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299 Silence the Silence No More: A Translanguaging Analysis of Two Silent Scenes in Wong Kar-Wai’s Multi-Genre Film ‘2046’

Authors: Liu M. Hanmin

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Wong Kar-Wai’s multi-genre film 2046, world premiered in 2004, comes with a vibrant mediascape made up of multiple named languages, code-switching, intertitles, news footage from the real world, and extra-linguistic means of communication. In film- and multilingual studies it is still a challenge to incorporate non-languages into an analytical framework with conventional languages. This paper uses translanguaging theory to read silent practices in Wong Kar-Wai’ 2046. Two scenes that feature the silence experience the most are taken as case studies. In these two scenes, we can identify two tropes of intersemiotic relationships that are co-articulated by silence: patriarchy and unfinished romance, respectively. The conclusion argues that silence in Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046 exerts multimodal agency by ‘speaking’ directly to the audience and in mutual directions to characters. Thereby, it moves beyond the passive role of merely accentuating or assisting the aural register of a film.

Keywords: translanguaging, Wong Kar-Wai, multimodality, semiotics, inter semiotics, Hong Kong media, film culture

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298 The Effect of Brand Mascots on Consumers' Purchasing Behaviors

Authors: Isari Pairoa, Proud Arunrangsiwed

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Brand mascots are the cartoon characters, which are mainly designed for advertising or other related marketing purposes. Many brand mascots are extremely popular, since they were presented in commercial advertisements and Line Stickers. Brand Line Stickers could lead the users to identify with the brand and brand mascots, where might influence users to become loyal customers, and share the identity with the brand. The objective of the current study is to examine the effect of brand mascots on consumers’ decision and consumers’ intention to purchase the product. This study involved 400 participants, using cluster sampling from 50 districts in Bangkok metropolitan area. The descriptive analysis shows that using brand mascot causes consumers' positive attitude toward the products, and also heightens the possibility to purchasing the products. The current study suggests the new type of marketing strategy, which is brand fandom. This study has also contributed the knowledge to the area of integrated marketing communication and identification theory.

Keywords: brand mascot, consumers’ behavior, marketing communication, purchasing

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297 An Interdisciplinary Approach to Investigating Style: A Case Study of a Chinese Translation of Gilbert’s (2006) Eat Pray Love

Authors: Elaine Y. L. Ng

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

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

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296 Sovereign Characters of Police in Turkey: Discretionary Use of Force on Criminalized Political Opponents

Authors: Emrah Denizhan

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Policing studies have drawn attention to the changing role of law enforcement in favour of harsh policing strategies throughout the world. Turkey has become part of this global transition process by restructuring its policing through a series of allegedly democratic amendments to Turkish law. Nevertheless, severe violations of human rights continue to be widely experienced phenomena. This paper suggests problematizing the changing judicial framework of policing together with the persistent aggressive policing in Turkey, by considering Agamben's concept of police as a sovereign entity – sovereign police. In so doing, the paper analytically dissects sovereign police into three premises: the criminalization of the (perceived) enemy, the militarization of the police, and finally, the discretionary use of force. This examination of the state’s early ethno-racial policies and the history of the Turkish police force, and of the changing judicial framework of police-related laws in the 2000s, demonstrates that certain ‘internal enemies’ have been criminalized by increasingly militarized police using escalating discretionary use of force.

Keywords: criminalization, discretionary use of force, policing, sovereignty

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295 Indian Women’s Inner-World and Female Protest in Githa Hariharan's Novel ‘The Thousand Faces of Night’

Authors: Hanaa Sameen Ameen Bajilan

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Gender statuses are inherently unequal; it is difficult to establish equality between men and women in the light of traditional inequalities across the world. This research focuses on the similarities and differences among women from different generations different kinds of educational backgrounds and highlights the conflict experiences of the characters in Githa Hariharan's novel ‘The Thousand Faces of Night’ The purpose is to show how women are suffering and are being humiliated in a male-dominated society. The paper depicts how women in India grapple from male domination aggressiveness as well as the cultural, social and religious controlling in the society they live in. The paper also seeks to explore the importance of Knowledge as a powerful component that produces positive effects at the level of desire. The paper is based on the theories of Simone Beauvoir, Pierre Bourdieu, Edward Said, Rene Descartes and Amy Bhatt. Finally, the paper emphasizes on survival against hegemonic regimes and Indian women's hope for a better life.

Keywords: equality, gender, Githa Hariharan, humiliation

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294 Embryonic and Larval Development of Pelophylax bedriagae (Amphibia, Anura), in Iran

Authors: Alireza Pesarakloo, Masoumeh Najibzadeh

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We studied the development and morphology of different larval stages of Pelophylax bedriagae at two rearing temperatures (20 and 24°C). Eggs collected from a breeding site in south-western Iran. Diagnostic morphological characters are provided for Gosner (1960) larval stages 1-46. The larvae hatched about seven days after egg deposition. Principal diagnostic feature including the formation of the funnel-shaped oral disc became discernible about ten days after hatch at Gosner stage 21 and degenerated at Gosner stage 42. Larvae developed faster at higher temperatures. The largest body length of larval P. bedriagae measured about 54mm in 70 days after egg deposition. Based on our results, the longest metamorphosis time was observed on temperature (20°C) whilst the shortest metamorphosis time occurred on temperature (24°C). Compared with the majority of other Palearctic Anurans, it appears that embryonic and larval development is usually slow rapid in P. bedriagae.

Keywords: development, larval stages, Pelophylax bedriagae, temperatures

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293 A New Concept for Deriving the Expected Value of Fuzzy Random Variables

Authors: Liang-Hsuan Chen, Chia-Jung Chang

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Fuzzy random variables have been introduced as an imprecise concept of numeric values for characterizing the imprecise knowledge. The descriptive parameters can be used to describe the primary features of a set of fuzzy random observations. In fuzzy environments, the expected values are usually represented as fuzzy-valued, interval-valued or numeric-valued descriptive parameters using various metrics. Instead of the concept of area metric that is usually adopted in the relevant studies, the numeric expected value is proposed by the concept of distance metric in this study based on two characters (fuzziness and randomness) of FRVs. Comparing with the existing measures, although the results show that the proposed numeric expected value is same with those using the different metric, if only triangular membership functions are used. However, the proposed approach has the advantages of intuitiveness and computational efficiency, when the membership functions are not triangular types. An example with three datasets is provided for verifying the proposed approach.

Keywords: fuzzy random variables, distance measure, expected value, descriptive parameters

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292 Host Range and Taxonomy of Hairy Caterpillars (Erebidae: Lepidoptera) in Different Cropping Ecosystems

Authors: Mallikarjun Warad, C. M. Kalleshwaraswamy, P. R. Shashank

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Studies were conducted to record the occurrence of different species of hairy caterpillar on different host plants in and around Shivamogga, Karnataka, India. Twelve genera of hairy caterpillars belonging to Arctiinae and Lymantriinae were recorded on different host plants and reared to adults in laboratory on their respective hosts. The Porthesia sp. feed on castor, Creatonotus gangis on cocoa, Perina nuda on fig, Pericalia ricini on pigeon pea, Utetheisa pulchella on sunhemp and Euproctis sp. on paddy and banana. Illustrations of immature and adults were made to associate them. Along with this, light traps were also set during the rainy season, to capture adults of hairy caterpillars. An illustrated identification key was provided for easy and accurate identification of adult of hairy caterpillars based on their morphological (male genitalial) characters. The study through a light on the existence of sexual dimorphism, polyphagous nature and diapause are the major hindrance in taxonomic identification. Hence, attempts were made to address these issues in the study.

Keywords: Erebidae, hairy caterpillars, male genitalia, taxonomy

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291 Text Based Shuffling Algorithm on Graphics Processing Unit for Digital Watermarking

Authors: Zayar Phyo, Ei Chaw Htoon

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In a New-LSB based Steganography method, the Fisher-Yates algorithm is used to permute an existing array randomly. However, that algorithm performance became slower and occurred memory overflow problem while processing the large dimension of images. Therefore, the Text-Based Shuffling algorithm aimed to select only necessary pixels as hiding characters at the specific position of an image according to the length of the input text. In this paper, the enhanced text-based shuffling algorithm is presented with the powered of GPU to improve more excellent performance. The proposed algorithm employs the OpenCL Aparapi framework, along with XORShift Kernel including the Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) Kernel. PRNG is applied to produce random numbers inside the kernel of OpenCL. The experiment of the proposed algorithm is carried out by practicing GPU that it can perform faster-processing speed and better efficiency without getting the disruption of unnecessary operating system tasks.

Keywords: LSB based steganography, Fisher-Yates algorithm, text-based shuffling algorithm, OpenCL, XORShiftKernel

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290 Machine Learning Automatic Detection on Twitter Cyberbullying

Authors: Raghad A. Altowairgi

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With the wide spread of social media platforms, young people tend to use them extensively as the first means of communication due to their ease and modernity. But these platforms often create a fertile ground for bullies to practice their aggressive behavior against their victims. Platform usage cannot be reduced, but intelligent mechanisms can be implemented to reduce the abuse. This is where machine learning comes in. Understanding and classifying text can be helpful in order to minimize the act of cyberbullying. Artificial intelligence techniques have expanded to formulate an applied tool to address the phenomenon of cyberbullying. In this research, machine learning models are built to classify text into two classes; cyberbullying and non-cyberbullying. After preprocessing the data in 4 stages; removing characters that do not provide meaningful information to the models, tokenization, removing stop words, and lowering text. BoW and TF-IDF are used as the main features for the five classifiers, which are; logistic regression, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, XGboost, and Catboost classifiers. Each of them scores 92%, 90%, 92%, 91%, 86% respectively.

Keywords: cyberbullying, machine learning, Bag-of-Words, term frequency-inverse document frequency, natural language processing, Catboost

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289 The Reach of Shopping Center Layout Form on Subway Based on Kernel Density Estimate

Authors: Wen Liu

Abstract:

With the rapid progress of modern cities, the railway construction must be developing quickly in China. As a typical high-density country, shopping center on the subway should be one important factor during the process of urban development. The paper discusses the influence of the layout of shopping center on the subway, and put it in the time and space’s axis of Shanghai urban development. We use the digital technology to establish the database of relevant information. And then get the change role about shopping center on subway in Shanghaiby the Kernel density estimate. The result shows the development of shopping center on subway has a relationship with local economic strength, population size, policy support, and city construction. And the suburbanization trend of shopping center would be increasingly significant. By this case research, we could see the Kernel density estimate is an efficient analysis method on the spatial layout. It could reveal the characters of layout form of shopping center on subway in essence. And it can also be applied to the other research of space form.

Keywords: Shanghai, shopping center on the subway, layout form, Kernel density estimate

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288 An Evaluation of the Auxiliary Instructional App Amid Learning Chinese Characters for Children with Specific Learning Disorders

Authors: Chieh-Ning Lan, Tzu-Shin Lin, Kun-Hao Lin

Abstract:

Chinese handwriting skill is one of the basic skills of school-age children in Taiwan, which helps them to learn most academic subjects. Differ from the alphabetic language system, Chinese written language is a logographic script with a complicated 2-dimensional character structure as a morpheme. Visuospatial ability places a great role in Chinese handwriting to maintain good proportion and alignment of these interwoven strokes. In Taiwan, school-age students faced the challenge to recognize and write down Chinese characters, especially in children with written expression difficulties (CWWDs). In this study, we developed an instructional app to help CWWDs practice Chinese handwriting skills, and we aimed to apply the mobile assisted language learning (MALL) system in clinical writing strategies. To understand the feasibility and satisfaction of this auxiliary instructional writing app, we investigated the perceive and value both from school-age students and the clinic therapists, who were the target users and the experts. A group of 8 elementary school children, as well as 8 clinic therapists, were recruited. The school-age students were asked to go through a paper-based instruction and were asked to score the visual expression based on their graphic preference; the clinic therapists were asked to watch an introductive video of this instructional app and complete the online formative questionnaire. In the results of our study, from the perspective of user interface design, school-age students were more attracted to cartoon-liked pictures rather than line drawings or vivid photos. Moreover, compared to text, pictures which have higher semantic transparency were more commonly chosen by children. In terms of the quantitative survey from clinic therapists, they were highly satisfied with this auxiliary instructional writing app, including the concepts such as visual design, teaching contents, and positive reinforcement system. Furthermore, the qualitative results also suggested comprehensive positive feedbacks on the teaching contents and the feasibility of integrating the app into clinical treatments. Interestingly, we found that clinic therapists showed high agreement in approving CWWDs’ writing ability with using orthographic knowledge; however, in the qualitative section, clinic therapists pointed out that CWWDs usually have relative insufficient background knowledge in Chinese character orthographic rules, which because it is not a key-point in conventional handwriting instruction. Also, previous studies indicated that conventional Chinese reading and writing instructions were lacked of utilizing visual-spatial arrangement strategies. Based on the sharing experiences from all participants, we concluded several interesting topics that are worth to dedicate to in the future. In this undergoing app system, improvement and revision will be applied into the system design, and will establish a better and more useful instructional system for CWWDs within their treatments; enlightened by the opinions related to learning content, the importance of orthographic knowledge in Chinese character recognition should be well discussed and involved in CWWDs’ intervention in the future.

Keywords: auxiliary instructional app, children with writing difficulties, Chinese handwriting, orthographic knowledge

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287 Temporality, Place and Autobiography in J.M. Coetzee’s 'Summertime'

Authors: Barbara Janari

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In this paper it is argued that the effect of the disjunctive temporality in Summertime (the third of J.M. Coetzee’s fictionalised memoirs) is two-fold: firstly, it reflects the memoir’s ambivalent, contradictory representations of place in order to emphasize the fractured sense of self growing up in South Africa during apartheid entailed for Coetzee. Secondly, it reconceives the autobiographical discourse as one that foregrounds the inherent fictionality of all texts. The memoir’s narrative is filtered through intricate textual strategies that disrupt the chronological movement of the narrative, evoking the labyrinthine ways in which the past and present intersect and interpenetrate each other. It is framed by entries from Coetzee’s Notebooks: it opens with entries that cover the years 1972–1975, and ends with a number of undated fragments from his Notebooks. Most of the entries include a short ‘memo’ at the end, added between 1999 and 2000. While the memos follow the Notebook entries in the text, they are separated by decades. Between the Notebook entries is a series of interviews conducted by Vincent, the text’s putative biographer, between 2007 and 2008, based on recollections from five people who had known Coetzee in the 1970s – a key period in John’s life as it marks both his return to South Africa after a failed emigration attempt to America, and the beginning of his writing career, with the publication of Dusklands in 1974. The relationship between the memoir’s various parts is a key feature of Coetzee’s representation of place in Summertime, which is constructed as a composite one in which the principle of reflexive referencing has to be adopted. In other words, readers have to suspend individual references temporarily until the relationships between the parts have been connected to each other. In order to apprehend meaning in the text, the disparate narrative elements have to first be tied together. In this text, then, the experience of time as ordered and chronological is ruptured. Instead, the memoir’s themes and patterns become apparent most clearly through reflexive referencing, by which relationships between disparate sections of the text are linked. The image of the fictional John that emerges from the text is a composite of this John and the author, J.M. Coetzee, and is one which embodies Coetzee’s often fraught relationship with his home country, South Africa.

Keywords: autobiography, place, reflexive referencing, temporality

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286 Benefits of Rainbow School Programmes: Students' and Teachers' Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Gender-Fair Language in Gender-Inclusive Schools

Authors: Teresa Naves, Katy Pallas, Carme Florit, Cristina Anton, Joan Collado, Diana Millan

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Although gender-fair language is relatively novel in Spain, in Catalonia, the Department of Education, as well as LGBT Associations, have been promoting several innovative programmes aimed at implementing gender-inclusive schools. These Rainbow School communities are ideal for looking at how these programmes affect the use of gender-fair language and the balanced representation of gender. The students' and teachers' perceptions and attitudes have been compared to those analysed in schools that have never implemented such programmes in primary or secondary education. Spanish and Catalan, unlike English, are gendered languages in which masculine forms have traditionally been used as the unmarked gender and have been claimed to be inclusive of all genders. While the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) rejects the use of inclusive language and thus deems all variables of inclusion of double gender as unnecessary, the vast majority of universities are promoting not only inclusive language but also gender-inclusive curricula. Adopting gender-fair language policies and including gender perspective in the curricula is an innovative trend at university level and in primary and secondary school education. Inclusion in education is a basic human right and the foundation for a more just and equal society. Educators can facilitate the process of welcoming by ensuring handbooks, forms, and other communications are inclusive of all family structures and gender identities. Using gendered language such as 'girls and boys' can be alienating for gender non-conforming and gender diverse students; on the other hand, non-gendered words like 'students' are regarded as inclusive of all identities. The paper discusses the results of mixed method research (survey, interviews, and experiment) conducted in Rainbow and non-Rainbow schools in Alacant and Barcelona (Spain). The experiment aimed at checking the role of gender-fair language in learners' perception of gender balance. It was conducted in Spanish, Catalan, and English. Students aged 10 to 16 (N > 600) were asked to draw pictures of people using specific prompts. The prompts in Spanish and Catalan were written using the generic masculine, 'los presidentes' 'els presidents' (presidents); using double gendered language such as 'ninos y ninas', 'nens i nenes' (boys and girls); and using non-gendered words like 'alumnado' 'alumnat' (students). The prompts were subdivided into people in school contexts participants could identify with, such as students and teachers; occupations mostly associated with men, such as pilots and firefighters; and occupations associated with women, such as ballet dancers and nurses. As could be expected, the participants only drew approximately the same percentage of female and male characters when double-gendered language or non-gendered words such as 'students' or 'teachers' were used, regardless of the language used in the experiment. When they were asked to draw people using the so-called generic masculine in Spanish or Catalan, 'los estudiantes' 'els estudiants' (students), less than 35% of the drawings contained female characters. The differences between the results for Rainbow and Non-Rainbow schools will be discussed in the light of the innovative coeducation programmes and learners' perceptions on gender-fair language gathered in the surveys and interviews.

Keywords: gender-fair language, gender-inclusive schools, learners’ and teachers’ perceptions and attitudes, rainbow coeducation programmes

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285 Revolution Biopolibag System Based on Water Hyacinth's Fiber as a Solution for Environmental Friendly Seeding and Seedling

Authors: Supriady R. P. Siregar, Rizki Barkah Aulia, Dhiya Fadilla Dewi

Abstract:

Polybag is a plastic that is used to seed plants. The common type that used for polybag is a synthetic that made from petroleum such as polyethylene. Beside the character of the raw material that are non-renewable and limited, synthetic polybag ability to disintegrate in the environment is very low. According to that situation, we need a solution to overcome these problems by creating an environmentally friendly polybag. In this research, using the water hyacinth plant fibers (Eichornia crassipes) as a major component in manufacturing the environmentally friendly polybag, the water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) contains approximately 60% cellulose. The research method used is an experiment by testing the mechanical characters and biodegradability bio-polybag water hyacinth fibers (Eichornia crassipes) on three medium that is dissolved in water, river water and buried in soil. The research shows bio-polybag of hyacinth fibers can rapidly degraded. This study is expected to be the beginning of the creation bio-polybag of water hyacinth fiber (Eichornia crassipes) and can be applied in agriculture.

Keywords: revolution, biopolybag, renewable, environment

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284 Evaluation of Wheat Varieties for Water Use Efficiency under Staggering Sowing Times and Variable Irrigation Regimes under Timely and Late Sown Conditions

Authors: Vaibhav Baliyan, S. S. Parihar

Abstract:

With the rise in temperature during reproductive phase and moisture stress, winter wheat yields are likely to decrease because of limited plant growth, higher rate of night respiration, higher spikelet sterility or number of grains per spike and restricted embryo development thereby reducing grain number. Crop management practices play a pivotal role in minimizing adverse effects of terminal heat stress on wheat production. Amongst various agronomic management practices, adjusting sowing date, crop cultivars and irrigation scheduling have been realized to be simple yet powerful, implementable and eco-friendly mitigation strategies to sustain yields under elevated temperature conditions. Taking into account, large variability in wheat production in space and time, a study was conducted to identify the suitable wheat varieties under both early and late planting with suitable irrigation schedule for minimizing terminal heat stress effect and thereby improving wheat production. Experiments were conducted at research farms of Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India, separately for timely and late sown conditions with suitable varieties with staggering dates of sowing from 1st November to 30th November in case of timely sown and from 1st December to 31st December for late sown condition. The irrigation schedule followed for both the experiments were 100% of ETc (evapotranspiration of crop), 80% of ETc and 60% of ETc. Results of the timely sown experiment indicated that 1st November sowing resulted in higher grain yield followed by 10th November. However, delay in sowing thereafter resulted in gradual decrease in yield and the maximum reduction was noticed under 30th November sowing. Amongst the varieties, HD3086 produced higher grain yield compared to other varieties. Irrigation applied based on 100% of ETc gave higher yield comparable to 80% of ETc but both were significantly higher than 60% of ETc. It was further observed that even liberal irrigation under 100% of ETc could not compensate the yield under delayed sowing suggesting that rise in temperature beyond January adversely affected the growth and development of crop as well as forced maturity resulting in significant reduction of yield attributing characters due to terminal heat stress. Similar observations were recorded under late sown experiment too. Planting on 1st December along with 100% ETc of irrigation schedule resulted in significantly higher grain yield as compared to other dates and irrigation regimes. Further, it was observed that reduction in yield under late sown conditions was significantly large than the timely sown conditions irrespective of the variety grown and irrigation schedule followed. Delayed sowing resulted in reducing crop growth period and forced maturity in turn led to significant deterioration in all the yield attributing characters and there by reduction in yield suggesting that terminal heat stress had greater impact on yield under late sown crop than timely sown due to temperature rise coinciding with reproductive phase of the crop.

Keywords: climate, irrigation, mitigation, wheat

Procedia PDF Downloads 92