Lines Of Division Research Articles

Despicable ‘other’ and innocent ‘us’: emotion politics in the time of the pandemic

This study investigates the emotional management strategies employed by the Chinese maintream media Huanqiu Shibao (HQSB), through the use of nationalistic rhetoric during the Covid-19 pandemic. By conducting a discourse analysis of the coverage of Covid-19 on HQSB’s WeChat account, this research reveals two primary emotional management strategies: defensive nationalism and aggressive nationalism. Defensive nationalism utilizes fear and positive emotions to uphold and defend Chinese politics, while aggressive nationalism employs disgust to counter external criticisms and delegitimize the US democratic system and international leadership. By examining how HQSB emotionally differentiates the world, the study unveils that tactics Chinese mainstream media use to construct national identity, drawing a divisive line between a despised ‘them’ and an innocent ‘us’. The Covid-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to reflect on the emotionalisation of Chinese digital propaganda and the evolution of state-led nationalism during a public health crisis. The research concludes that the use of emotion in HQSB’s Covid-19 coverage aligns with China’s broader strategy of nation-building and global influence promotion. It underscores the need for greater awareness of the emotional mobilization used in political communication, particularly during times of crisis.

The Public Engagement Industry: Distancing Publics through Managed Engagement and Ideologised Transparency

“Public Engagement” is a salient term that signifies industry-deployed strategies and tactics to manage public demands for recognition and participation in the formation of public policy. The term also includes government responses to these demands by outsourcing public-government relations to interested organisations. This Public Engagement Industry (PEI) legitimises actions and policies through consulting enterprises, public relations (PR) and commercial organisations that take advantage of weakened public spheres, to which the PEI contributes. The PEI is oriented toward officially planned outcomes by folding public concerns into formulaic engagement practices. A local example highlights generic lines of division between the PEI, its clients and resistance groups. More generally, the PEI's assumptions of communication, dialogue, deliberation, and transparency are criticised, along with its methods of data gathering that pose “public engagement” as though public stamps of approval had been demonstrated, claims that deserve critical analysis.

Changes in the Design Shape of Two-Block Asymmetrical Cuts According to the Head Shape Division, Angle, and Slice Line

Purpose: In this study, the weight line is the right (diagonal) line and the shape line is the asymmetrical cut of the left (diagonal) line rendered in the form of two blocks. In addition, it is meaningful to provide basic data on haircuts by demonstrating the design and length changes according to head area division, angle, and slice line.Methods: It is divided into upper and lower parts starting from golden back medium point, back point, and back nape medium point. 10 cm at the upper point, diagonal (V) line on the left, diagonal (A) line on the right, celestial axis of 0°, and a head angle of 20°, and 40° were used.Results: LGBM1 and LB1 were observed as two-block asymmetrical cuts, expressing rhythm, mystery, liveliness, dynamic, and freshness. However, LBNM1 was observed only asymmetrically. Since the asymmetrical cut is different from left to right, a heterogeneous phenomenon appeared. Regular asymmetry is thought to provide dynamism, liveliness, rhythm, and freshness expressed as harmonious beauty of order and balance. In addition, since the slice line is started from the side, it is considered that the slope is less than that starting from the back. One length symbolizes smoothness, orderliness, and heaviness, and the gradation has both a smooth texture and rough texture.Conclusion: Asymmetrical cuts can provide freshness, mystery, dynamism, liveliness, and rhythm through imbalance. In other words, the asymmetrical cut can be balanced and harmonized with creative effects. In future studies, it is expected that studies on the mixed form of gradation and uniform layer cut, volume cut, and design form of the front of the head and the temporal area of the head will be conducted.

Belonging to the City: Alliances between Community Art and Diaconia as a Means to Overcome Segregation in a Gentrifying Neighbourhood in Amsterdam

Between 2019 and 2021, volunteers of a local Protestant congregation in Amsterdam, professional artists, and (other) local residents organised the interactive exhibit A(t) home in the Staats. In this project, community art and diaconia joined forces using multidisciplinary methods to strengthen relations in the neighbourhood and to discern issues of belonging and lines of division in the changing neighbourhood. The project was situated at the intersection of an “up and coming” neighbourhood and a shrinking congregation. By analysing the exhibit, this article contributes to the development of creative, arts-based research methods in diaconal studies. Within this approach, art is never a mere illustration or a vehicle for reflection but rather a generator of knowledge. The central question is: how can alliances between community art and diaconia contribute to overcoming segregation in urban contexts? This question is informed by the process of gentrification and the search by city churches for ways to engage with urban changes. After the introduction and methodological reflections, the article describes the background and practice of the project, followed by the outcomes of the interactive exhibit. It concludes by answering the central question and mapping theoretical and practical challenges concerning alliances between art and diaconia in urban contexts.

Investigation of total skin helical tomotherapy using a 3D-printed total skin bolus

ObjectiveTo investigate the effectiveness of using a 3D-printed total skin bolus in total skin helical tomotherapy for the treatment of mycosis fungoides.Materials and methodsA 65-year-old female patient with a 3-year history of mycosis fungoides underwent treatment using an in-house desktop fused deposition modelling printer to create a total skin bolus made of a 5-mm-thick flexible material, which increased the skin dose through dose building. The patient's scan was segmented into upper and lower sections, with the division line placed 10 cm above the patella. The prescription was to deliver 24 Gy over 24 fractions, given 5 times per week. The plan parameters consisted of a field width of 5 cm, pitch of 0.287 and modulation factor of 3. The complete block was placed 4 cm away from the planned target region to reduce the area of the internal organs at risk, especially the bone marrow. Dose delivery accuracy was verified using point dose verification with a "Cheese" phantom (Gammex RMI, Middleton, WI), 3D plane dose verification with ArcCHECK (Model 1220, Sun Nuclear, Melbourne, FL), and multipoint film dose verification. Megavoltage computed tomography guidance was also utilized to ensure the accuracy of the setup and treatment.ResultsA 5-mm-thick 3D-printed suit was used as a bolus to achieve a target volume coverage of 95% of the prescribed dose. The conformity index and homogeneity index of the lower segment were slightly better than those of the upper segment. As the distance from the skin increased, the dose to the bone marrow gradually decreased, and the dose to other organs at risk remained within clinical requirements. The point dose verification deviation was less than 1%, the 3D plane dose verification was greater than 90%, and the multipoint film dose verification was less than 3%, all of which confirmed the accuracy of the delivered dose. The total treatment time was approximately 1.5 h, which included 0.5 h of wearing the 3D-printed suit and 1 h with the beam on. Patients only experienced mild fatigue, nausea or vomiting, low-grade fever, and grade III bone marrow suppression.ConclusionThe use of a 3D-printed suit for total skin helical tomotherapy can result in a uniform dose distribution, short treatment time, simple implementation process, good clinical outcomes, and low toxicity. This study presents an alternative treatment approach that can potentially yield improved clinical outcomes for mycosis fungoides.

Predicting ineffability: Grammatical gender and noun pluralization in Icelandic

The structure of inflectional paradigms is characterized by interdependencies between forms and categories. The question is what the nature of these interdependencies are and how they are discovered in acquisition. In this article, I approach these issues from a learning perspective using gender and plural formation in Icelandic as a case study. Specifically, I investigate how knowledge of grammatical gender facilitates the induction of plural forms or vice versa. Noun pluralization in Icelandic cross-cuts both gender and inflection classes, raising the question of how children can extract the relevant generalizations given syncretism both within and across inflectional paradigms. In a corpus study, I show how predictions regarding the productivity of correspondences between gender and plural forms in Icelandic can be formulated by the Tolerance Principle, a learning model proposed by Yang (2005; 2016). The model centers around a threshold function that predicts the division line between productive and unproductive linguistic patterns in language based on the proportion of exceptions associated with any given pattern. These predictions were put to the test in two elicited production studies on both children and adults. I demonstrate how both children and adults were at a loss to pluralize nouns that they were unable to assign gender to. Thus, productivity in gender assignment correlated with productivity in plural formation. Since knowledge of gender is contingent on the knowledge of productive nominative singular forms, I propose that gender may be a developmental prerequisite for the acquisition of plural formation in Icelandic due to the statistical primacy of singular forms in the input. I argue that gaps within the inflectional paradigm of Icelandic nouns follow naturally from a learning process guided by productivity that fails and results in rote memorization.

Terrible security problem: an aesthetics approach and study of the Korean Nuclear Crisis

ABSTRACT This article develops aesthetics as a method in the study of international politics from and for the ‘love children’ in the colonial house of IR. I argue that the terrible as an aesthetic category captures the problem of violence and distortion in international politics particularly along imperial/anti-imperial, colonising/colonised lines of division. Denoting an extreme, the terrible captures how some political positions, actions, subjectivities and performances assault human sense and sensibilities that simultaneously construct boundaries. This affective form of violence requires conceptual-creative reckoning. The first section develops aesthetics as a method with a focus on the concept of caricatures to show how they are boundary events that create newness through distortion and exaggeration significant in moving beyond the entrapments of coloniality and imperial arrangements. The next two sections illustrate and extend this point through Korea as a place where Great Power politics play out. I first examine the prevailing caricatures of the Korean Nuclear Crisis and then empty out the state as a subject position in approaches to studying international politics. Together I show what is involved in moving beyond the violence matrix of international politics: everyday-level creative, reflexive strategies that more intimately face up to the political violence on auto-repeat.

Riverside Placemaking outside Big Cities—The Case Study of Three Polish Rivers

Most placemaking activities have both tangible and intangible aspects. However, the most significant division line comes from the driving force behind the process, which can be either top-down formal actions or bottom-up informal ones. This article presents how placemaking works and what types of related actions dominate in rural areas, focusing on the riparian zones of three lowland rivers in Poland with a total length of 300 km. The main goal was to demonstrate the specificity of placemaking in riverfront areas outside large cities and to investigate the answers to the following questions: (1) How do public spaces emerge there? (2) Which entities are responsible for their creation, type, form, and location? To achieve these objectives, a detailed field inventory from the water level and interviews with creators, caretakers, and users of selected places were conducted. This research showed that informal placemaking is very common outside of cities and is also integrated into the creation of less numerous but more impressive public and private recreational areas. In terms of form, “Do It Yourself” (DIY) objects overwhelmingly dominate in all types of places. Both of these characteristics, informality and DIY, clearly indicate the specificity of rural riparian areas and the need to consider them in planning and strategic actions in areas outside large cities.

The Realities of Toleration: Army Chaplaincy, Religious Politics and Scottish Military Experience, c.1690–1763

This article examines the under-studied practical implications of legal toleration and the realities of religious co-existence, by exploring how Scottish army chaplains pushed at confessional dividing lines and tested the differing toleration systems within the British Isles to their limits. By situating army chaplaincy at the centre, rather than the margin, of the wider religio-political changes in early eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland, it argues that the deficiency of chaplaincy resulted not from individual neglect, but its legal juxtaposition between the religious and military authorities, an institutional position that both reflected and amplified church-state tensions. Such jurisdictional ambiguity was gradually clarified by the mid-eighteenth century, when Scottish army chaplains, as military personnel, came under the effective control of lay patronage. Despite persistent concerns for chaplains' doctrinal orthodoxy at the individual and local levels, Presbyterian chaplains became increasingly Moderate in outlook, which had implications for soldiers' spirituality. Similar to the patronage disputes between Moderate appointees and their Evangelically-minded parishioners in Scottish localities, chaplains and soldiers also diverged in their religious character. Accordingly, the fact that chaplaincy posts were more easily given to the Moderates frustrated pious soldiers, who held on to their confessional identities even when the eighteenth-century British army, and the various religious landscapes across the Atlantic in which they served, became an assuredly pluralistic and porous spiritual environment.

Design Form by Right Diagonal Line Asymmetrical Cut according to Head Region Division, Angle and Slice Line

Purpose: This research focuses on a creative design cut with right diagonal line asymmetrical haircuts according to head region division, angle, and slice line. Of late, managing customers in the hair beauty industry has been difficult because customers are always looking for new things; therefore, a haircut with a new and creative design is required. This study provides basic data on haircuts.Methods: Hair on the top of the head was divided into three sections: golden-back medium point, back-point, and back-nape medium point. Hair on the upper part of the head was cut at 0°, 30°, and 60°, and the lower part of the head was cut at 45°; however, only the hair on the upper part of the head was used for length measurement.Results: The natural procedure angle of 0° represents smooth and straight textures. In addition, the volume, weight, and expansion increase with the area. Smooth and coarse textures exhibited fine layers at 30° and natural layers at 60° simultaneously. The parallel line becomes straight; further, the A (diagonal) and the V (diagonal) lines elongate and shrink toward the face line, respectively.Conclusion: The right angle line asymmetry cut can provide freshness, liveliness, and rhythm feeling through unbalance. In addition, the length of the right side increases, resulting in a heterogeneous effect. In the future, the volume cut and length changes will be studied based on the jawline, neckline, and clavicle.

Approval of Democracy in Modern Ukraine: European Integration Discourse

The study is dedicated to identifying the grounds and factors for the establishment of democracy in post-Soviet Ukraine. The objective grounds for establishing democratic values include national traditions, the territorial and spiritual unity of Ukrainians, and developed a civil society. Taken together, they create the basis for the formation of the main foundations of a consolidated democracy in Ukraine. The main challenges and threats to democracy in Ukraine are related to the functioning of the artefacts of a totalitarian society in the spheres of management, economy, culture, ideology, and, at the current stage, the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.Internal threats include the existence of confrontational dividing lines in society (regional opposition, shadow economy, corruption schemes, social injustice, confessional confrontation, resisting the establishment of the state language, etc.). The main external threats are the interference of the Russian Federation in the sovereign rights of Ukraine to implement its own development strategy.The guarantee of building a consolidated democracy in Ukraine is the collective will of the society itself, which performs a dual creative function: on the one hand, it acts as an initiator and donor of positive democratic changes in the country, on the other, it performs the functions of public control over the activities of all branches of government in their observance of the constitutional principles of state life. The fundamental result of the consolidated efforts of the authorities and civil society is Ukraine's legislatively supported integration course.

The effect of non-linear signal in classification problems using gene expression.

Those building predictive models from transcriptomic data are faced with two conflicting perspectives. The first, based on the inherent high dimensionality of biological systems, supposes that complex non-linear models such as neural networks will better match complex biological systems. The second, imagining that complex systems will still be well predicted by simple dividing lines prefers linear models that are easier to interpret. We compare multi-layer neural networks and logistic regression across multiple prediction tasks on GTEx and Recount3 datasets and find evidence in favor of both possibilities. We verified the presence of non-linear signal when predicting tissue and metadata sex labels from expression data by removing the predictive linear signal with Limma, and showed the removal ablated the performance of linear methods but not non-linear ones. However, we also found that the presence of non-linear signal was not necessarily sufficient for neural networks to outperform logistic regression. Our results demonstrate that while multi-layer neural networks may be useful for making predictions from gene expression data, including a linear baseline model is critical because while biological systems are high-dimensional, effective dividing lines for predictive models may not be.

The stances of the parties and social movements towards Putin’s war: a new line of division?

ABSTRACT The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is having an impact all over the world. Italy has often sought to balance EU responses with its national interests towards Russia but in contrast with the past, Mario Draghi’s government took an unequivocally firm stance towards the Kremlin. This article describes the historical origins of the so-called ‘privileged relation’ between Italy and Russia in order to understand better the emergence and development of pro-Russian parties in the Italian political system. How did they react to the war in Ukraine? What kinds of policies have the parties implemented since the start of the conflict? Is there any continuity with the Draghi government? What about the pacifist movement and its political representation? Engaging with these questions enables us to offer a general overview of Italian parties’ attitudes towards this international event in Europe.

The Many Worlds of Indian Historiography

The birth of Indian historiography has been a lookout of draconian criticism and surveillance. Historiography in modern times needs to be addressed in a crucial and meaningful way, especially when we confabulate about those countries which have a colonial past. In this paper we fancy to ruminate and canvass the case of making of Indian historiography. For an extensive and dominant phase, India struggled to extricate between literature and historical writing, clouding itself into indecisive dividing lines to demarcate periods. The advent of the British sculptured and synthesized the inception of Indian historical writing, craftily attempting it to periodize and document it. Indian historiography found itself dichotomizing into religious premises and kept thriving and coalescing bit by bit from rationalist to nationalist to economic paradigm. There is beyond any shadow of doubt, a dire role of the British in cobbling up Indian historiography. This paper assays to radiate how Indian historiography crept in to augment itself into glorifying the ancient glorious past which was once placed in juxtaposition to the glory of the Roman and Greek. This paper also delves into the saga of catechizing the profound quest in the making of the Indian historical consciousness.

Henri Bergson’s Haunted Epistemology: Consciousness Unframed

In his main work, Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson presents a panpsychist ontology which cuts through the Gordian knot of the mind vs. matter problem. Taking this age-old philosophical topic, Bergson pushes the dualism of mind and matter beyond breaking point. Matter is reconceived as the sum of all images. Bergson introduces the dual concepts of cosmic “perception” and cosmic “memory”. Matter itself is reinterpreted as a continuum of all possible intensities of perception and memory. Bergson’s ontology has important epistemological ramifications. There is no sharp dividing line between consciousness and matter. In light of these insights, I propose a reading of Bergson’s relatively lesser-known lecture, “‘Phantasms of the Living’ and Psychical Research”, presented at the Society for Psychical Research in 1913. Here, Bergson elaborates upon the implications of his image-ontology for the possible post mortem fate of consciousness. In my concluding remarks, I suggest that Bergson’s observations may be of help in constructing an anti-reductionist and indeterministic epistemology.

Classifying Slope Unit by Combining Terrain Feature Lines Based on Digital Elevation Models

In recent years, applications and analyses based on slope units have become increasingly widespread. Compared with grid units, slope units can better represent terrain features and boundaries and allow a more complete view of the morphology of the Earth’s surface. Maps based on slope units also offer significant improvements for disaster prediction and the analysis of slope land resources. Therefore, we need a reasonable method of slope unit classification. Although some methods have been proposed for slope unit classification, they have been too focused on morphological variations and have not fully considered the importance of geomorphology, and the geomorphological and physical significance of slope partitioning remain unclear. Therefore, we propose a novel slope unit classification method by combining terrain feature lines (CTFL) derived from the meaning of geomorphology ontology that use several terrain feature lines, such as geomorphic water division lines, valley shoulder lines, slope toe lines, and shady/sunny slope boundary lines, to classify slopes. The Jiuyuangou and Lushan study areas were selected to test the CTFL method. Compared with the traditional hydrological method, the CTFL method can effectively overcome topographic abruptness and distortions, improve the uniformity of slope and aspect within individual units, and increase the accuracy of slope unit applications and analyses. This work fully considers the importance of geomorphology and is conducive to future studies of slope unit division.

Performance comparison and suitable climatic zones of three water-mediated evaporative cooling technologies

Evaporative cooling is an alternative cooling technology to conventional vapor-compression systems with lower energy use and pollution emissions. This paper presents theoretical performance comparison for three water-mediated evaporative coolers and provides a design guideline for choosing evaporative coolers under specific climates and operating boundary conditions. Theoretical solutions of counter-flow evaporative cooling are given and verified with maximum absolute and relative errors of 0.26 K and 1.23% respectively. The heat transfer coefficient of the combined heat and mass transfer is 2.72–4.95 times than the pure heat transfer process if there were no mass transfer. Climatic dividing lines of various technologies are affected by the design parameters of the system, dropping the psychrometric chart into different applicable climatic areas. The simulation results show that the climatic areas in psychometrics where indirect outperforms direct evaporative cooling will expand when increasing the air–water ratio and heat transfer coefficient, and climatic area of series indirect evaporative cooling shrinks when increasing temperature difference. The simplified selection method using such difference in merits is verified by case study, which can serve as a useful guideline for choosing the proper evaporative cooling technology for a wide range of geographical locations.

Functional polarization of Poland’s North-Eastern small towns in the light of R. Camagni’s concept of territorial competitiveness

Small towns’ functions are exposed to pressure stemming from globalization and metropolitan development. In North-East Poland, the study area, they are at the same time affected by the restructuring of rural economy. As in other peripheral regions in Europe, they are subject to de-population trends. The analysis of socioeconomic functions performed by small towns reveals functional polarization – a division line between local service centers and those towns additionally performing specialized functions. Whereas some towns succeed in sustaining, or attracting, often niche type industrial and service activities, others remain to rely upon the provision of private and public services for the surrounding rural places. By referring to R. Camagni’s conceptualization of territorial competitiveness, the role of selected territorial capital components – local entrepreneurship, social capital and local leadership is identified in the observed development of socio-economic functions of supra-local market range. The findings reveal the focusing, by the successful local firms upon the specificity of market offer, its linking with local tradition, skills, and natural resources. On the conceptual side, at a town level, they indicate the importance of mutual interlocking of individual endogenous factors in the development and the sustenance of competitive functions.

Toward global citizenship? People (de)bordering their lives during COVID-19 in Latin America and Europe

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted global interdependencies, accompanied by widespread calls for worldwide cooperation against a virus that knows no borders, but responses were led largely separately by national governments. In this tension between aspiration and reality, people began to grapple with how their own lives were affected by the global nature of the pandemic. In this article, based on 493 qualitative interviews conducted between 2020 and 2021, we explore how people in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Ecuador, Ireland, Italy and Mexico experienced, coped with and navigated the global nature of the pandemic. In dialogue with debates about the parameters of the ‘global’ in global health, we focus on what we call people's everyday (de)bordering practices to examine how they negotiated (dis)connections between ‘us’ and ‘them’ during the pandemic. Our interviewees’ reactions moved from national containment to an increasing focus on people's unequal socio-spatial situatedness. Eventually, they began to (de)border their lives beyond national lines of division and to describe a new normal: a growing awareness of global connectedness and a desire for global citizenship. This newfound sense of global interrelatedness could signal support for and encourage transnational political action in times of crises.

Decomposition horizons: from graph sparsity to model-theoretic dividing lines

Low treedepth decompositions are central to the structural characterizations of bounded expansion classes and nowhere dense classes, and the core of main algorithmic properties of these classes, including fixed-parameter (quasi) linear-time algorithms checking whether a fixed graph $F$ is an induced subgraph of the input graph $G$. These decompositions have been extended to structurally bounded expansion classes and structurally nowhere dense classes, where low treedepth decompositions are replaced by low shrubdepth decompositions. In the emerging framework of a structural graph theory for hereditary classes of structures based on tools from model theory, it is natural to ask how these decompositions behave with the fundamental model theoretical notions of dependence (alias NIP) and stability. In this work, we prove that the model theoretical notions of NIP and stable classes are transported by decompositions. Precisely: Let $\mathscr C$ be a hereditary class of graphs. Assume that for every $p$ there is a hereditary NIP class $\mathscr D_p$ with the property that the vertex set of every graph $G\in\mathscr C$ can be partitioned into $N_p=N_p(G)$ parts in such a way that the union of any $p$ parts induce a subgraph in $\mathscr D_p$ and $\log N_p(G)\in o(\log |G|)$. We prove that then $\mathscr C$ is (monadically) NIP. Similarly, if every $\mathscr D_p$ is stable, then $\mathscr C$ is (monadically) stable. Results of this type lead to the definition of decomposition horizons as closure operators. We establish some of their basic properties and provide several further examples of decomposition horizons.