Critical Analysis Research Articles

Media portrayal of sexual violence in Pakistan: A critical discourse analysis of the Lahore-Sialkot motorway incident

Sexual violence against women is one of the serious social concerns that still persist across the world in its various forms and manifestations. This study talks about the portrayal of the gang-rape of a woman in Pakistani English Print media who was travelling on the Lahore-Sialkot Motorway when her car ran out of petrol where two armed men came along and raped her. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Transitivity analysis from Halliday's systemic functional linguistics is utilized to explore the language used by leading Pakistani English newspapers to report the incident. Moreover, the study examines how print media affects the opinion of the people towards the incidents of sexual violence against women in Pakistan. These discursive features of a language enable us to see deep into the thought-processes of the people of a society. The paper concludes that reporting on violence against women shapes and is shaped by the approach of the people towards women and the forms of violence against them.

COVID-19 Modeling: A Review

The SARS-CoV-2 viruses and their triggered COVID-19 pandemic have fundamentally reshaped the world in almost every aspect, their evolution and influences remain. While over a million of literature have been produced on these unprecedented, overwhelming global disaster, one critical question is open: How has COVID-19 been quantified globally? This further inspires many other questions: What COVID-19 problems have been modeled? How have modeling methods in areas such as epidemiology, artificial intelligence (AI), data science, machine learning, deep learning, mathematics and social science played their roles in characterizing COVID-19? Where are the gaps and issues of these COVID-19 modeling studies? What are the lessons for quantifying future disasters? Answering these questions involves the analysis of a very broad spectrum of literature across different disciplines and domains. Distinguishing from specific efforts, this review takes the first attempt to generate a systematic, structured and contrastive landscape and taxonomy of global COVID-19 modeling. First, the surveyed problems span over a full range of COVID-19, including epidemic transmission processes, case identification and tracing, infection diagnosis and medical treatments, non-pharmaceutical interventions and their influence, drug and vaccine development, psychological, economic and social influence and impact, and misinformation, etc. Second, the reviewed modeling methods traverse all relevant disciplines, from statistic modeling to epidemic modeling, medical analysis, biomedical analysis, AI, deep and machine learning, analytics, and simulation. Critical analyses further identify significant issues and gaps, for example, simple techniques and similar problems have been overwhelmingly addressed everywhere, while intrinsic and foundational issues and deep insights have been overlooked. The review discloses significant opportunities for more deeply, effectively and uniquely quantifying COVID-19-like global disasters from their intrinsic working mechanisms, interactions and dynamics.

UAV Swarm Objectives: A Critical Analysis and Comprehensive Review

UAV Swarm Objectives: A Critical Analysis and Comprehensive Review

The Asian Games and city branding in China: multimodal critical discourse analysis of Hangzhou’s promotional videos on YouTube

The Asian Games and city branding in China: multimodal critical discourse analysis of Hangzhou’s promotional videos on YouTube

Enemy narratives

Abstract Within the fields of narratology, cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis, this article studies how “Vote Leave” – the “respectable” side of the pro-Brexit debate –, used storytelling to frame an exclusionary conception of the British nation. To do so, the article relies on a critical narrative analysis of the storytelling elements at the heart of a corpus of official documents from the 2016 campaign, and argues that those Brexit narratives were instrumental in the creation of a nativist conception of the British nation. The paper contributes to the rich literature on Brexit narratives by adopting an original approach focusing on what we call “enemy narratives” and on how this type of narratives helped construct a restrictive understanding of the British nation. The result will be correlated with the growing political polarization of post-Brexit British society and the emergence of what some researchers consider as a culture war

The carnivalesque celebration of a slack laborer icon on a talent show: Civic engagement, commercialization, and political control

In Produce Camp 2021, an online Chinese talent show, an underdog named Lelush rose to fame as a slack laborer icon. This study investigated this case through a critical discourse analysis incorporating media events theory, the concept of carnival, aesthetic public sphere theory, and the concept of structures of feeling. It was revealed that the audience related to Lelush's slackness on carnivalesque social media, indirectly addressing work oppression and social stratification in an aesthetic public sphere. However, the audience's ambiguities, where they also objectified Lelush, somewhat diminished the aesthetic discussions’ critical potential. This contradiction suggested a new structure of feeling associated with rapid social changes in China. Besides, this study demonstrated that although the audience discourse appeared challenging, it was harnessed by the producer for commercial benefit. Meanwhile, as the audience's critical discourse did not directly threaten the political legitimacy, the Party-State allowed it for political and economic purposes.

A race against time: A critical analysis of elite student-athletes’ accelerated temporality through story completion

Numerous elite student-athletes (ESA) engaged in a dual career, balancing athletic pursuits with education, find themselves grappling with the perception of insufficient time to fulfil their demands. Existing research advocates for the implementation of programs promoting academic flexibility, alongside measures aimed at achieving balance between academic and sport-related activities. Other studies underscore the significance of equipping ESA with skills such as time management. Nonetheless, challenges persist in balancing the escalating demands of sports and education. Drawing upon Hartmut Rosa's theory of social acceleration, this study aims to analyse how ESA perceive and respond to time pressure. Employing the story completion method, data was gathered from seven ESA who crafted narratives in response to three story stems. Through reflexive thematic analysis, two overarching themes were identified: (1) no time to waste; and (2) it is what it is. ESA faced incessant pressure to optimise their time and performance and resorted to instrumentalising personal relationships, using them as a tool for career development. Nevertheless, this pressure was not universally perceived as oppressive; rather, it was often accepted as an inherent aspect of their reality. Our conclusion is that as long as capitalist societies and their accelerating impositions persist, any assistance that can be provided to ESA will inherently be limited.

Toward a linguistic anthropological approach to listening: An ear with power and the policing of “active listening” volunteers in Japan

AbstractThis article develops the concept of an ear with power. An ear with power works through listeners who can, by listening, alter people's speech and other actions. It does so in ways that suit the institutions on whose behalf the listener acts. Unlike approaches focused on the effects of listening in interactions, an ear with power is a triadic relation in process, requires listening to listeners, and shows how absent listeners affect social relations. The article traces the implications of a complaint filed against Buddhist “active listening” volunteers in Japan after the 2011 disasters. Despite not using “Buddhist language” while volunteering, they were reported for “religious‐sounding speech,” which led to the temporary hiatus of their volunteer activities. Analyzing the distributed listening that led to that censure, this article demonstrates how linguistic anthropology might reframe critical analyses of power and governance, which have tended to rely on vision and speech. More specifically, it considers the ramifications of acts of listening that precede the speech that they are imagined to follow, the process whereby listeners come to hear themselves through the ear of another, and the ways that policing listening can alienate listening from listeners.

Prosthetics of heart valves: current trends

Nowadays, cardiac surgery is highly safe in terms of protecting internal organs from ischemia and cardioplegia. This allows for radical interventions even in weakened patients with risk factors for perioperative mortality. At the same time, classical heart valve replacement operations are suboptimal and invalidate the patient. The purpose of the study is a critical analysis of the current state of the problem of prosthetics of heart valves, evaluation of alternative methods of prosthetics. To replace the atrioventricular valve, the most suitable bioprosthesis may be a human mitral allograft, which allows you to fully replace the complex structures of the AV valve due to the identity of the anatomy, can work cooperatively with all functional structures of the left ventricle, has the potential to repopulate the patient’s tissues, sufficient strength and a relatively simple and permanent anatomy (compared with tricuspid allograft), while it is safe in terms of rejection. Currently, there is a large set of alternative options for prosthetics of heart valves. Many of them are characterized by greater physiology, anatomicity, and safety in terms of prosthesis-dependent complications compared to classic skeleton prostheses.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Needs in Health Care Sectors—A Critical Analysis of Social Innovation in the Health Sector in Taiwan

Background: Social innovation is often used as a mechanism to jump-start public–private partnerships to leverage resources to achieve social impact; the analysis of sustainability and the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) cannot be emphasized enough. Due to advances in the information and communication technology industry in Taiwan, this paper aims to explore whether these advancements drive CSR as a form of social innovation to meet health needs in Taiwan. Methodology: This paper uses a case study to look at CSR programs in the health sector in Taiwan. Corporations with diverse missions and different CSR approaches that are available on the internet are selected. The analysis of the case study takes a qualitative, exploratory approach to shed light on current initiatives. Results: The majority of CSR programs in Taiwan are private sector activities that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic; current CSR activities in Taiwan are driven by awards, public relations, and external interests. Corporations in Taiwan have the potential to address the health care gaps of urban–rural health utilization among Taiwanese indigenous communities. It is recommended for corporations to (1) develop partnerships with public health experts or to (2) employ CSR personnel with health care backgrounds who can navigate the intersection between health, business, and policies to develop CSR strategies. Conclusions: Further evaluation of the projects mentioned in this paper to assess the direct and indirect impact on health outcomes could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the field of CSR in the health sector in Taiwan.

Determination and interpretation of firing temperature in ancient porcelain utilizing thermal expansion analysis

This study utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, combining simulation experiments, thermal expansion analysis, XRD, SEM, and physical property assessments to investigate the firing temperature in illitic-kaolinitic porcelain. Our findings indicate that the accuracy of the thermal expansion method depends on both the actual firing temperature and dwell time. When dwell time is uncertain, the method provides a range of possible actual firing temperatures, differing by approximately 100 °C. Remarkably, as the porcelain body nears full vitrification, the determined firing temperature tends to be notably higher. A critical analysis of previous research suggests potential overestimation of ancient kiln temperatures. Additionally, our study highlights the usefulness of bulk density, water absorption, porosity, and mullite content in determining dwell time. Overall, our research offers new insights into ancient porcelain firing processes.

The hidden costs of inflation: A critical analysis of industrial development and environmental consequences.

The study draws attention to the associations between monetary and economic elements and their potential environmental impacts. The study uses time series data from 1960 to 2022 to examine the connection between CO2 emissions, industrial growth, GNE, and inflation in China. The researchers utilized the well-known econometric technique of nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) to examine nonlinear correlations between these variables. The results reveal that GDP, inflation, and economic development influence long-term CO2 emissions. The strong positive correlation between gross national expenditures and economic activity increases CO2 emissions. In the short run, CO2 emissions are positively and statistically significantly affected by inflation. While inflation temporarily affects CO2 emissions, this effect dissipates with time. Industrial activity increases CO2 emissions, and China's fast industrialization has damaged the environment. The energy-intensive fertiliser manufacturing process and fossil fuels increase CO2 emissions. The research shows how government officials and academics may collaborate to create tailored measures to alleviate the environmental impacts of economic activity.

Enhancing Patient Safety during Intra-Hospital Transport: A Critical Analysis of Adherence to Intra-Hospital Transport Protocol among Healthcare Personnel of ICU in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Enhancing Patient Safety during Intra-Hospital Transport: A Critical Analysis of Adherence to Intra-Hospital Transport Protocol among Healthcare Personnel of ICU in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Undisclosed facts in Friedrich Wegener's links with Nazism.

Friedrich Wegener was the author of a comprehensive description of a disease that was named Wegener's granulomatosis. In 2010, its name was changed to granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), the reason being that Wegener's links to Nazism were revealed. The research was conducted between May 2021 and August 2023 and was based on the historical method (understood as defining the subject of research, critical analysis of collected historical source materials, and historiographical synthesis) using the methods of direct and indirect inference ascribed to the historical method. Wegener and his wife were members of numerous Nazi organizations. He was rewarded for his stance by the German Reich. Together with his family, he lived in very comfortable conditions for the standards of the time, unattainable for the average person. He described himself as a frontline combatant in the Nazi invasion of Poland. Friedrich Wegener's links with Nazism were more extensive than has hitherto been known. The links involved his professional and private life. They testify to his membership in numerous Nazi organizations, as well as his active involvement in the activities of various institutions and communities of the German Reich and his overt expression of support for Hitler. Wegener's numerous accolades from the German Reich providing him with professional, material and personal benefits were proof of his links with the Nazi movement. Wegener's association with Nazism helped him to advance his career, and to attain a high social status and quality of life, both before the outbreak and during the Second World War.

The Principal’s Problem: Anchoring Equity in an Exclusionary System

This paper, titled "The Principal’s Problem: Anchoring Equity in an Exclusionary System," offers a critical examination of the multifaceted challenges faced by school administrators in navigating an educational landscape marked by growing equity issues, safety concerns, and the mental health crisis among students. Drawing from the author's 35-year experience in various educational roles in Massachusetts, the critical situational analysis delves into the complexities of fostering a safe, inclusive, and equitable school environment amid a youth mental healthcrisis, reactionary legislative demands, and a hostile, binary, social landscape. The first section of the paper emphasizes the evolving role of educators in addressing the emotional well-being and safety of students. It illustrates how external tragedies, such as student suicides and drug overdoses, directly impact school policies and practices. The author highlights systemic inequities, such as disparities in recognition and funding between male and female sports teams and the controversy over gender-specific graduation gown colors, illustrating the difficulties in upholding Title IX and fostering gender equality. The paper further explores the escalation ofgun violence and its profound impact on school safety protocols and legislation. It addresses the administrative burden of complying with a myriad of regulations aimed at ensuring student safety and emotional well-being, from bullying and gender identity to mental health and substance abuse. The first-person narrative critiques the overwhelming expectations placed on school administrators to act as both educational leaders and first responders in a socioeconomically diverse and politically charged environment. It argues for a more holistic approach to educational leadership, one that balances legal and moral obligations to protect free expression with the imperative to create a nurturing and inclusive school culture. The author posits that the real challenge lies in the practical implementation of these ideals.

The Influence of Ideology on Translation: A Study of The Russia-Ukraine War

Ideology plays a huge role in translation, and it does affect the end product. The study shows that the influence of translation is influenced by the translator's ideology, the institution's ideology, or even the government's ideology. The study aims to investigate the influence of ideology on the translated text and the nature of ideology's function in translation, particularly during wartime. The study focuses on manipulated texts, headlines, and strategies used by translators as they change or rewrite the product of translation to reflect specific beliefs and viewpoints. The study is restricted to texts about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine; the source texts are in English, and the translations are in Arabic. The researcher applies Lefevere's model (1992) by comparing the source texts with their translations. Additionally, the analysis of the translations in the study makes use of critical discourse analysis following Fairclough's (1995) model. The strategies that were used by the translators to manipulate the texts were omission, addition, and lexicalization. The translators interfere in the ST by changing the intent of the original author without maintaining equivalence. The translations of the examples, taken from the RT Arabic Website, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)website, and Al Emarat Alyoum website, reflect points of view about the Russia-Ukraine war in the countries where they are produced; these websites adopted the official government's statements and the position these governments take from the Russia-Ukraine war. As a result, translation can be used and seen as a political tool to accomplish certain objectives. It is advised to conduct more research to look into additional factors influencing translation as well as the authors' intentions.

The Principal’s Problem: Anchoring Equity in an Exclusionary System

This paper, titled "The Principal’s Problem: Anchoring Equity in an Exclusionary System," offers a critical examination of the multifaceted challenges faced by school administrators in navigating an educational landscape marked by growing equity issues, safety concerns, and the mental health crisis among students. Drawing from the author's 35-year experience in various educational roles in Massachusetts, the critical situational analysis delves into the complexities of fostering a safe, inclusive, and equitable school environment amid a youth mental healthcrisis, reactionary legislative demands, and a hostile, binary, social landscape. The first section of the paper emphasizes the evolving role of educators in addressing the emotional well-being and safety of students. It illustrates how external tragedies, such as student suicides and drug overdoses, directly impact school policies and practices. The author highlights systemic inequities, such as disparities in recognition and funding between male and female sports teams and the controversy over gender-specific graduation gown colors, illustrating the difficulties in upholding Title IX and fostering gender equality. The paper further explores the escalation ofgun violence and its profound impact on school safety protocols and legislation. It addresses the administrative burden of complying with a myriad of regulations aimed at ensuring student safety and emotional well-being, from bullying and gender identity to mental health and substance abuse. The first-person narrative critiques the overwhelming expectations placed on school administrators to act as both educational leaders and first responders in a socioeconomically diverse and politically charged environment. It argues for a more holistic approach to educational leadership, one that balances legal and moral obligations to protect free expression with the imperative to create a nurturing and inclusive school culture. The author posits that the real challenge lies in the practical implementation of these ideals.

Pretrial Determination of Suspects in Corruption Cases: A Critical Analysis of Judge Sarpin Rizaldi's Decision and Its Implications for Combating Corruption in Indonesia

The pretrial decision in the BG case (No. 04/Pid.Prap/2015/PN.Jkt.Sel) represents a pivotal moment in Indonesian legal history, significantly impacting the landscape of pretrial mechanisms and the balance of power in law enforcement. This research delves into the implications of this landmark decision, examining its role in expanding the scope of pretrial authority to include the review of suspect designations, a move that has since been codified through amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code. The study further explores the decision's emphasis on upholding the presumption of innocence, a fundamental human right often overlooked in the pursuit of justice. Additionally, the research scrutinizes the decision's impact on the authority of the Corruption Eradication Commission, highlighting the need for a delicate balance between robust law enforcement and the protection of individual rights. By analyzing legal documents, scholarly literature, and the socio-political context surrounding the case, this research provides a comprehensive understanding of the decision's transformative effect on Indonesia's legal system and its broader implications for the fight against corruption.

María Félix in Italy

ABSTRACT By the end of 1940s the Mexican film star, María Félix, had risen to the status of living legend at home and piqued the attention of filmmakers abroad. While her participation in Spanish and French productions has been studied, her performances in films produced in Italy, Incantesimo tragico (Dir. Mario Sequi, 1951) and Messalina (Dir. Carmine Gallone), have received less critical analysis. Building on scholarship about the regional and international reverberations of Mexican Golden Age cinema, studies on transnational stardom, as well as star theory, this article reveals how Felix’s projects in Italy constituted transnational experiments within a broader Southern European postwar strategy to counter Hollywood’s market dominance. In contradistinction to her Spanish and French films in which Félix was cast as a foreigner, in Italy Félix played Italian characters. Close film analysis illustrates how to varying degrees, Félix’s roles in Italy engaged her preestablished type known as the mujer sin alma (woman without a soul), and the examination of archival materials shows how the Italian popular press blended Félix’s onscreen characters with the actress off screen. Ultimately, Félix clashed with the ideals of postwar Italian female stardom and was met with an ambivalent financial and critical reception.

СОЗДАНИЕ КОМФОРТНОЙ ДВОРОВОЙ ТЕРРИТОРИИ В РЕГИОНЕ КАК ИСТРУМЕНТ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКИМИ ПРОЦЕССАМИ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ ПРИМОРСКОГО КРАЯ ДАЛЬНЕВОСТОЧНОГО ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОГО ОКРУГА)

This article explores the significance of creating comfortable courtyard areas in a region as a tool for demographic management, using the example of Primorsky Krai in the Far Eastern Federal District. The study is based on methods of generalization and critical analysis of scientific publications on the subject, as well as comparison, interpretation, and abstraction. The paper highlights the relevance of the demographic crisis faced by modern Primorsky Krai and identifies the negative consequences of ongoing processes leading to population decline. Views of contemporary authors on the formation of comfortable courtyard areas are summarized, identifying factors and features of such areas and their impact on the quality of life of the population. The author presents an approach to defining a comfortable urban environment (including adjacent areas), based on the consolidation of the state, society, and entrepreneurship, as well as established practices and mechanisms for managing a comfortable urban environment.