Mixed Style Research Articles

Analyzing Arabic Handwriting Style through Hand Kinematics.

Handwriting style is an important aspect affecting the quality of handwriting. Adhering to one style is crucial for languages that follow cursive orthography and possess multiple handwriting styles, such as Arabic. The majority of available studies analyze Arabic handwriting style from static documents, focusing only on pure styles. In this study, we analyze handwriting samples with mixed styles, pure styles (Ruq'ah and Naskh), and samples without a specific style from dynamic features of the stylus and hand kinematics. We propose a model for classifying handwritten samples into four classes based on adherence to style. The stylus and hand kinematics data were collected from 50 participants who were writing an Arabic text containing all 28 letters and covering most Arabic orthography. The parameter search was conducted to find the best hyperparameters for the model, the optimal sliding window length, and the overlap. The proposed model for style classification achieves an accuracy of 88%. The explainability analysis with Shapley values revealed that hand speed, pressure, and pen slant are among the top 12 important features, with other features contributing nearly equally to style classification. Finally, we explore which features are important for Arabic handwriting style detection.

Glacier Terminus Morphology Informs Calving Style

AbstractTerminus change is a complex outcome of ice‐ocean boundary processes and poses challenges for ice sheet models due to inadequate calving laws, creating uncertainty in sea level change projections. To address this, we quantify glacier termini sinuosity and convexity, testing the hypothesis that terminus morphology reflects dominant calving processes. Using 10 glaciers with diverse calving styles in Greenland over the period from 1985 to 2021, we establish a supervised classification of calving style by comparing morphology and literature‐derived calving observations. Validation with four of these glaciers and flotation conditions and subglacial discharge routing observations confirms concave, smooth termini indicate buoyant flexure dominated‐calving, while convex, sinuous termini suggest serac failure dominated‐calving. We also identify a mixed style where both calving types may occur. We use these classes to label calving style from 1985 to 2021 for all 10 glaciers and explore how this changes over time as glaciers retreat.

Intensifying Hydrogen Evolution in Solid–Liquid MgH2 Hydrolysis Reaction by a High Shear Reactor

AbstractThe reactor is very critical to intensify the reaction rate controlled by mass transfer. Solid magnesium hydride (MgH2) shows great advantages in hydrogen storage; however, poor liquid–solid hydrolysis kinetics limit its application. Various chemical reactors were explored and are used to improve the hydrolysis efficiency. Results show that the mixing style could affect the surface coating behavior. Specifically, the higher temperature and mixing strength could promote the MgH2 hydrolysis. Furthermore, induced crystallization could effectively relieve coating and strengthen the hydrolysis, especially at the high mixing level. The result indicated that the mass transfer distance between crystal seed and formed MgH2 particles played an important role in MgH2 hydrolysis.

DDDM-VC: Decoupled Denoising Diffusion Models with Disentangled Representation and Prior Mixup for Verified Robust Voice Conversion

Diffusion-based generative models have recently exhibited powerful generative performance. However, as many attributes exist in the data distribution and owing to several limitations of sharing the model parameters across all levels of the generation process, it remains challenging to control specific styles for each attribute. To address the above problem, we introduce decoupled denoising diffusion models (DDDMs) with disentangled representations, which can enable effective style transfers for each attribute in generative models. In particular, we apply DDDMs for voice conversion (VC) tasks, tackling the intricate challenge of disentangling and individually transferring each speech attributes such as linguistic information, intonation, and timbre. First, we use a self-supervised representation to disentangle the speech representation. Subsequently, the DDDMs are applied to resynthesize the speech from the disentangled representations for style transfer with respect to each attribute. Moreover, we also propose the prior mixup for robust voice style transfer, which uses the converted representation of the mixed style as a prior distribution for the diffusion models. The experimental results reveal that our method outperforms publicly available VC models. Furthermore, we show that our method provides robust generative performance even when using a smaller model size. Audio samples are available at https://hayeong0.github.io/DDDM-VC-demo/.

Dialogised heteroglossia and the Japanese-Chinese mixed style of “Kaidōki”

This paper attempts to analyse the technique of assimilation of classical Chinese writing into the Japanese literary tradition of the early medieval period. The author’s main focus is one of the three styles used by Japanese authors of the time, namely the mixed Japanese-Chinese style (the so-called wakan konkō buntai). It was used in various prose genres, including travel diaries. Referring to the text of Kaidōki (Records of [a journey along] the seacoast road), a Japanese travel account from the early 13th century, the author shows on the selected source material how, in accordance with Bakhtin’s understanding of heteroglossia, a dialogue occurs on the level of Chinese and Japanese writing and how intertextual relations can influence the formation of the style of a literary work. As can be noted, the historical and literary borrowings from the Chinese tradition (the rich Sino-Japanese vocabulary and the prosaised poems originally composed in classical Chinese) enriched the semantic layer of the Japanese text. This was also reflected in the style of the work, which, despite its “crabbedness” and the fact that it was shaped by the experience of borrowed but also native polyphony, seems to be the optimal way to express it.

Small-Scale Opera Genres in Vienna before and after Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice: Adaptation and Polemics

The article is devoted to works pertaining to small opera genres (festa teatrale, azione teatrale, componimento drammatico) created in Vienna during the 1750s and the 1760s. As a rule, they were produced in honor of some significant event in the lives of the imperial family. Most of them were endowed with a festive character corresponding to the spirit of court festivity, an uncomplicated mythological or allegorical plot, relatively short duration and only three or four characters. The article examines genre-related indications of short operas, their varieties (the chamber and the scenically representative) and their indicative examples which has served as a foothold for the approbation of a mixed style, including the components of both the French (the choral and ballet scenes, the immense weight of the orchestral recitatives) and the Italian traditions (developed arias and secco recitatives). The conclusion is arrived at about the special position of Gluck’s azione teatrale Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) among a set of analogous genres. Gluck’s rejection of the genre of the monumental aria indicated his polemics with the poetics of both the opera seria and the festa teatrale. Despite the implementation in Orfeo of a considerable amount of festa teatrale compositional techniques, such a rejection is perceived as the greatest avant-garde reforming gesture of the 1760s.The author compares two operas with Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. These are Florian Leopold Gassmann’s Amore and Psyche (1767) and Johann Adolf Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe (1768), composed later. In the first case, we can talk about a direct influence, while in the second case, it is possible to observe in Marco Coltellini’s libretto of a set of allusions to Ranieri Calzabigi’s poetical text of Orfeo and at the same time the polemic qualities of Hasse’s positions in regard to Gluck’s score.

Perception of Supervisory Styles.

Supervision is a dynamic and challenging leadership process that remains an essential element within the field of speech-language pathology. This study examines a facet of the supervisory relationship and investigates whether supervision styles are similarly perceived by the supervisor and supervisee and if a mismatch in perceptions relates to satisfaction between supervisor-supervisee dyads. Data were collected through completion of a demographic questionnaire as well as the Supervisory Style Inventory, which categorizes supervisory style as being attractive, interpersonally sensitive, task-oriented, or mixed. Findings demonstrate notable variance in the self-reported supervisor style and the style supervisees perceived as being demonstrated with over half (66%) of supervisor-supervisee dyads reporting a perceived mismatch in style. There was not a significant difference in the level of supervisee satisfaction for supervisor dyads reporting a match in style compared with mismatch. Satisfaction was correlated with all three reported style characteristics; however, interpersonal and task-oriented supervisory style characteristics were more strongly correlated with supervisee satisfaction. Having a mixed style was the only style that was significantly correlated with supervisees reporting having their needs met. Discussions include practical implications, limitations of the study, as well as recommendations for future research.

Community Coping Strategies for COVID-19 in Bangladesh: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Survey

It is important to know the community coping strategies during the rapid uprise of a pandemic, as this helps to predict the consequences, especially in the mental health spectrum. This study aims to explore coping strategies used by Bangladeshi citizens during the major wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: Prospective, cross-sectional survey of adults living in Bangladesh. Methods: Participants were interviewed for socio-demographic data and completed the Bengali-translated Brief-COPE Inventory. COPING indicators were categorized in four ways, such as approach, avoidant, humor, and religion. Results: Participants (N = 2001), aged 18 to 86 years, were recruited from eight administrative divisions within Bangladesh (mean age 31.85 ± 14.2 years). The male-to-female participant ratio was 53.4% (n = 1074) to 46.6% (n = 927). Higher scores were reported for approach coping styles (29.83 ± 8.9), with lower scores reported for avoidant coping styles (20.83 ± 6.05). Humor coping scores were reported at 2.68 ± 1.3, and religion coping scores at 5.64 ± 1.8. Both men and women showed similar coping styles. Multivariate analysis found a significant relationship between male gender and both humor and avoidant coping (p < 0.01). Male gender was found to be inversely related to both religion and approach coping (p < 0.01). Marital status and education were significantly related to all coping style domains (p < 0.01). The occupation was related to approach coping (p < 0.01). Rural and urban locations differed in participants’ coping styles (p < 0.01). Exploratory factor analysis revealed two cluster groups (factors 1 and 2) of mixed styles of coping. Conclusions: Participants in this study coped with the COVID-19 pandemic by utilizing mixed coping strategies. This study finds female gender, the married, elderly, and rural populations were adaptive to positive approaches to coping, whereas the male and educated population had the avoidant approach to coping.

Explainable dimensionality reduction (XDR) to unbox AI ‘black box’ models: A study of AI perspectives on the ethnic styles of village dwellings

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become frequently used in data and knowledge production in diverse domain studies. Scholars began to reflect on the plausibility of AI models that learn unexplained tacit knowledge, spawning the emerging research field, eXplainable AI (XAI). However, superior XAI approaches have yet to emerge that can explain the tacit knowledge acquired by AI models into human-understandable explicit knowledge. This paper proposes a novel eXplainable Dimensionality Reduction (XDR) framework, which aims to effectively translate the high-dimensional tacit knowledge learned by AI into explicit knowledge that is understandable to domain experts. We present a case study of recognizing the ethnic styles of village dwellings in Guangdong, China, via an AI model that can recognize the building footprints from satellite imagery. We find that the patio, size, length, direction and asymmetric shape of the village dwellings are the key to distinguish Canton, Hakka, Teochew or their mixed styles. The data-derived results, including key features, proximity relationships and geographical distribution of the styles are consistent with the findings of existing field studies. Moreover, an evidence of Hakka migration was also found in our results, complementing existing knowledge in architectural and historical geography. This proposed XDR framework can assist experts in diverse fields to further expand their domain knowledge.

Význam raně renesanční architektonické skulptury na lombardské a moravské umělecké periferii

This case study examines the importance of artistic periphery in the field of early Renaissance architectural sculpture in the years circa 1480 – 1550. The Renaissance style spread to Central Europe especially from Italy. In the older historical art literature opinions often emerged that Central European stonemasons did not understand the principles of Italian Renaissance art, and because of this misunderstanding they combined Renaissance style with Gothic. The author has undertaken long-lasting terrain research of early Renaissance architectural sculpture in one Central European and one Italian region of artistic periphery: the Moravian part of the Dyje valley and Val Camonica in Lombardy. In both regions were very elaborately stylistically examined stone decorations of architecture in the years circa 1480 – 1550. When the information about client´s social status, travel itinerary was known, also the influence of client on the style of architectural culpture was researched. On the basis of terrain research, the author comes to the conclusion that stonemasons in the Moravian part of the Dyje valley in the time of early Renaissance created architectural sculptures in the same styles that Italian artists in Val Camonica did: Romanesque Renaissance, a mixed style combining Gothic with Renaissance, early Renaissance architectural sculptures closely following the antique models, early Renaissance architectural sculptures created as an innovative modification of antique models.

La balance optimisme/pessimisme : détermination des styles d’expectations envers le futur en se basant sur la bidimensionnalité du Life Orientation Test–Revised

IntroductionSince the 1980s, two major conceptions of the representation of optimism and pessimism have been disputed: a unidimensional structure and a bidimensional structure. ObjectiveThe bidimensional properties of the LOT-R in French are further explored in order to determine the styles of expectations towards the future according to the levels of optimism and pessimism. MethodA study carried out on a sample of 913 adults from France (72.7% women, M=41.14years) proposes (1) to analyze the factorial structure of the instrument, the relationship between the two constructs as well as their separability, (2) to explore the styles of expectations according to the levels of positive and negative expectations by latent profile analysis, (3) to study the influence of socio-demographic factors (age, sex, socio-professional category) on cognitive expectations about the future. ResultsThe confirmatory factor analyzes establish the replicability of the bidimensional latent structure of the instrument across age and gender groups, with the separability between the two constructs increasing with advancing age. The latent profile analysis supports the existence of three styles of expectations towards the future within the sample: the optimistic style, the mixed style and the pessimistic style. The MIMIC model demonstrates that increasing age and socio-professional category are determinants of levels of optimism and pessimism as well as of expectation styles. ConclusionThis research makes it possible to use the styles of expectations towards the future which empirically models the balance between the levels of optimism and pessimism.

THE ROLE OF A LEADER IN THE SUCCESS OF A SPORTS TEAM

The aim of the research is to reveal the role and activity of the leader in various sports, the characteristics of his behavioral manifestation. Research problems are to study leadership as a socio-psychological phenomenon, to determine the role of leadership in the sports process, to study the individual psychological features of the leader, to find out the characteristic features of leadership behavior in sports teams. Some personal aspects of the leaders' behavior that affect the success of the sports team have been analyzed in the article. The main types of leadership have also been analyzed, with the help of which the leading role of leadership in sports teams is established. Steady manifestations of the leader's behavior, psychological reliability, as well as possession of willpower and abilities, increase the effectiveness of sports activities in the team. The above mentioned factors determine the role and style of the leader in the team: Leader-performer (executive), situational leader, leading organizer, mixed style leader. The role of the leader is highly appreciated in the sports process; the importance of the latter is especially obvious in gaming teams. Thus, we may conclude that the leaders in the groups are mainly athletes at an older age who have extensive sports and competitive experience or differ in their behavioral indicators.

Advances on concrete strength properties after adding polypropylene fibers from health personal protective equipment (PPE) of COVID-19: Implication on waste management and sustainable environment

Using Health personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks, safety foot shoes and protective suits has expanded dramatically due to COVID-19 pandemic leading to a widespread distribution of the PPE, particularly the face masks, in the environments including streets, dump sites, seashores and other risky locations. The environmental degradation of polypropylene, the essential plastic component in single-use face masks (SUM), takes between 20 and 30 years and thus it is essential to develop experimental approaches to recycle the polypropylene or to reuse it in different ways. This paper explores the integration of SUM into concrete structures to improve its mechanical properties. We first to cut the inner nose wire and ear loops, then distribute the PPE material among five different mixed styles. The PPE were applied by volume at 0%, 1%, 1.5%, 2.0%, and 2.5%, with tests focusing on UCS, STS, FS, and PV to determine the concrete's overall consistency and assess the improvement in its mechanical properties. The results showed that adding PPE improves the strength properties and general performance of the concrete specimens. The pattern of rising intensity started to fade after 2%. The findings demonstrated that adding PPE fibers enhanced the UCS by 9.4% at the optimum 2% PPE. The PPE fibers, on the other side, are crucial in calculating the STS and FS of the reinforcement concrete.

Narrow, Fast, and “Cool” Mantle Plumes Caused by Strain‐Weakening Rheology in Earth's Lower Mantle

AbstractThe rheological properties of Earth's lower mantle are key for mantle dynamics and planetary evolution. The main rock‐forming minerals in the lower mantle are bridgmanite (Br) and smaller amounts of ferropericlase (Fp). Previous work has suggested that the large differences in viscosity between these minerals greatly affect the bulk rock rheology. The resulting effective rheology becomes highly strain‐dependent as weaker Fp minerals become elongated and eventually interconnected. This implies that strain localization may occur in Earth's lower mantle. So far, there have been no studies on global‐scale mantle convection in the presence of such strain‐weakening (SW) rheology. Here, we present 2D numerical models of thermo‐chemical convection in spherical annulus geometry including a new strain‐dependent rheology formulation for lower mantle materials, combining rheological weakening and healing terms. We find that SW rheology has several direct and indirect effects on mantle convection. The most notable direct effect is the changing dynamics of weakened plume channels as well as the formation of larger thermochemical piles at the base of the mantle. The weakened plume conduits act as lubrication channels in the mantle and exhibit a lower thermal anomaly. SW rheology also reduces the overall viscosity, notable in terms of increasing convective vigor and core‐mantle boundary heat flux. Finally, we put our results into context with existing hypotheses on the style of mantle convection and mixing. Most importantly, we suggest that the new kind of plume dynamics may explain the discrepancy between expected and observed thermal anomalies of deep‐seated mantle plumes on Earth.

과거와 현재의 조각을 이어붙이기

Africa's 'digitalization' is now a clear social, economic, and cultural phenomenon. Digital culture permeates the daily lives of many Africans and connects Africa to other regions in a way that has never been before. How are contemporary African artists changing the existing story? They are not only experimenting with digital technology, but also creating new images that project space between the past and the present, analog and digital, pre-colonial and post-colonial reality. By shortening complex perceptions to moments, overlapping reality and unreality, and reorganizing landscapes and history through multiple spatial implementations, digital collages build a world closer to neutral than concrete actions. The artists want to use digital collage to remind their values that have faded in the long history of oppression and to volatilize negatives about black culture. Through this act, the concept of modern 'memory represented by the past' is dismantled, disappeared, and the past as a dead time is revived. Another characteristic of contemporary African digital collage is that it rejects fixed identity and tries to expand it in an irregular and distracting way. By combining broken symbols through contradictory mixed styles, contemporary african digital collage that contain metaphors for deviation overthrow tradition. It aims to overturn the image of the colony through the process of "African remix," which consists of multiple images containing complex contexts of self-sustaining memories and overlapping memories that cannot be defined in language.

The Complex Interplay Between Physical Activity and Recovery Styles in Patients With Severe Mental Disorders in a Real-World Multicentric Study.

Compared with the general population, people with severe mental disorders have significantly worse physical health and a higher mortality rate, which is partially due to the adoption of unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, such as heavy smoking, use of alcohol or illicit drugs, unbalanced diet, and physical inactivity. These unhealthy behaviors may also play a significant role in the personal and functional recovery of patients with severe mental disorders, although this relationship has been rarely investigated in methodologically robust studies. In this paper, we aim to: a) describe the levels of physical activity and recovery style in a sample of patients with severe mental disorders; b) identify the clinical, social, and illness-related factors that predict the likelihood of patients performing physical activity. The global sample consists of 401 patients, with a main psychiatric diagnosis of bipolar disorder (43.4%, N = 174), psychosis spectrum disorder (29.7%; N = 119), or major depression (26.9%; N = 118). 29.4% (N = 119) of patients reported performing physical activity regularly, most frequently walking (52.1%, N = 62), going to the gym (21.8%, N = 26), and running (10.9%, N = 13). Only 15 patients (3.7%) performed at least 75 min of vigorous physical activity per week. 46.8% of patients adopted sealing over as a recovery style and 37.9% used a mixed style toward integration. Recovery style is influenced by gender (p < 0.05) and age (p < 0.05). The probability to practice regular physical activity is higher in patients with metabolic syndrome (Odds Ratio - OR: 2.1; Confidence Interval - CI 95%: 1.2–3.5; p < 0.050), and significantly lower in those with higher levels of anxiety/depressive symptoms (OR: 0.877; CI 95%: 0.771–0.998; p < 0.01). Globally, patients with severe mental disorders report low levels of physical activities, which are associated with poor recovery styles. Psychoeducational interventions aimed at increasing patients' motivation to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors and modifying recovery styles may improve the physical health of people with severe mental disorders thus reducing the mortality rates.

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the Treatise on the Astrolabe

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the <i>Treatise on the Astrolabe</i>

An explorative study of urban wedding consumptions in China: evidence from Shanghai and Chengdu

Weddings are not only among the most important milestones of individuals, but also demonstrate the process of social value construction. Through a survey of a total of 359 residents from two major cities in China, this study found that friends and relatives are the primary source of information for choices of wedding service providers, followed by the internet. The provision of one-stop services is the main reason to hire one. The majority of the respondents select lucky days and legal holidays for their wedding ceremonies. Star hotels are the most preferred wedding venue. Creative wedding style is the most popular, followed by Chinese and western mixed style, traditional Chinese style, and western style. Results also reveal the influences of various factors on wedding consumption preferences and the impact of traditional wedding culture such as the role of parents. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Synchronous cut of the mixed style of the 20th century

Synchronous cut of the mixed style of the 20th century

Alàgbà Adébáyọ̀ Fálétí as a Yorùbá Novelist

In their introduction to a book entitled: Yorùbá creativity, fiction, language, life, and songs, Falola and Genova (2005) assert that creativity among the ̣ Yorùbá has a long history and the traditions of oral histories, storytelling, performances and dramas are parts of fundamental habit of their civilization. In the pre-colonial era, the authorship of the stories in the folktales and in some poetic genres could not be claimed by any particular artist/artiste, but due to the influence of colonial rule, western literary traditions, among others, storytellers can claim authorship of their works today. The Yorùbá make no distinction between myth, legend and history. They all come under ìtàn (Ogunsina, 1992). One Yorùbá novelist that has distinguished himself in the effective use of ìtàn (story) in novel writing is Adébáyò ̣ Fálétí. He is not only a storyteller, he is a literary historian. Every creative writer in Yorùbá society is admired and judged as competent or otherwise not only by writing in the medium of the language but by having captivating story line and on the basis of his/her use of ‘quality’ Yorùbá language (i.e. language full of proverbs and other rhetoric devices). An average Yorùbá reader of Fálétí’s novels, poetry, plays and viewer of his films usually responds with delight because of his powerful use of Yorùbá language and captivating story lines, plot construct, narrative techniques and thematic contents. Isọ la (1998) classifies all other Yorùbá major novelists apart from Fágúnwà ̣ into three groups on their use of language and creative pedigree (190). According to him, “some are mere story tellers” who use mainly casual language; 154 Lere Adeyemi there are others with mixed styles and there are a few of them who creatively exploit the genius of the language. He identifies Adébáyò ̣ Fálétí among few others as belonging to the genius category. Ogunsina (1992) groups Fálétí as a prominent historical novelist who incorporates historical materials into novel writing. I agree with Ogunsina that Fálétí’s effective transfer of histori ̣ - cal materials into fiction is a revelation of the novel’s eclectic quality and also a manifestation of Fálétí’s creative genius. Fálétí’s love of ìtàn (story) is reflected in all his literary works, be it poetry, play or novel. However, our focus in this study is to examine Adébáyọ̀ ̣ Fálétí as a Yorùbá novelist through his literary lens.