Natural Representation Research Articles

Nature and Environmental Security in Philip Onuoha’s “Song for my Mother”

This paper critically examines the centrality of nature and environmental security in the poetry of Philip Onuoha. It deploys the theoretical framework of Ecocriticism to appraise the selected poems from Onuoha’s Song for my Mother. The literary theory of Ecocriticism which was foretold through a seminal article by William Rueckert in 1978 was given breath in the latter part of the 20th century by Cherryl Glotfelty. Since then, studies in nature and environmental issues have developed in geometric dimensions. Critics foresee an unimaginably large harvest of literary productions on nature and the environment due to the daily vitiation of nature and its consequences to the human world. From time immemorial, literature has always served as a credible pendulum that gauges the activities of man. This paper, therefore, adds to knowledge forms because it underpins the seriousness of nature in the survival of mankind. Its uniqueness derives from the fact that the poems examined are Children’s works. The age of childhood is an age of innocence hence it veritably serves as a fertile period for the indoctrination of nature ideals. The methodology deployed in the study is qualitative as relevant symbols, exerts and images in the verses are romanticized in the light of their natural aesthetics. The aim principally is for child readers of the works to be taken in by nature and its verities. The psychological effect of this inspires them to grow up to become conscious of the ideals of nature and the environmental security it guarantees. The study thus takes a refreshing approach in the areas of nature and environmental security by examining the representation of nature in selected Children’s poems. It further opens vistas into the centrality of literature in the global fight against environmental security.

“In Other News”: China’s International Media Strategy on Xinjiang—CGTN and New China TV on YouTube

In the Western world China stands accused of severe human rights violations regarding its treatment of the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in its northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This is the first article to systematically analyze the response of China’s international state media to these allegations. By studying the YouTube channels of two leading Chinese state media, China Global Television Network (CGTN) and New China TV (operated by Xinhua News Agency), it presents an in-depth understanding of how China’s foreign-facing propaganda works in a crucial case. The quantitative content analysis highlights how China reacted to increasing international (mostly United States) pressure regarding its Xinjiang policies by producing higher volumes of videos and putting out new counternarratives. The qualitative analysis that follows provides in-depth treatment of the most important discourses that Chinese media engage in to salvage the nation’s international image, namely those on development, culture, nature, and terrorism. It finds several ways of countering criticism, ranging from presenting a positive image of China, in line with traditional propaganda guidelines and President Xi Jinping’s assignment to state media to “tell the China story well,” to more innovative approaches. Thus the development narrative becomes more personalized, the discourse on culture supports the “heritagization process” to incorporate minority cultures into a harmonized “Chinese civilization,” representations of nature firmly tie Xinjiang into the discourse of “beautiful China,” the “terror narrative” strategically employs shocking footage in an attempt to gain international “discourse power,” etc. The article provides an up-to-date picture of China’s state media strategy on a highly contentious international issue.

Quasilattices and complex concept analysis

Quasilattices are algebraic structures that comprise a semilattice-ordered system of lattices. In this paper, certain quasilattices (that are characterized abstractly by a local completeness property) provide an extension of Wille's concept analysis to the study of complex systems that function on a number of distinct levels. In an important special case, a chain semilattice serves to represent a time series governing the evolution of a single system. Natural set representations of locally complete quasilattices have opposed set inclusions describing order relations within a complete lattice, and parallel set inclusions tracking homomorphisms that connect distinct lattice fibers. In the time series model, the sets that appear within the set representation accumulate successive layers at each time point, establishing a mathematical model for historical phenomena.

Nature as a symbiotic edge of humanity: eco-critical reading of Armah’s The Healers

In his historical novel, The Healers, Ayi Kwei Armah correlates elements of the fictional settings of Esuano and the Eastern Forest, with different phases of social communication. The binary settings and their elements mirror the symbiotic character of the relationship that ought to exist between humans and nature. Armah employs symbolic, temporal and cultural codes reflective of African tradition and indigenous values through natural representation in the text as communicative properties. Eco-critical theory guides this study to explore the relationship that exists between humans and the natural world. Principles from eco-criticism are explored with a focus on Armah’s creation of groups in the Eastern Forest and rivers as emblems of the divine with particular powers, in contrast to what Esuano represents to these groups. In this novel, Esuano is associated with manipulation, while the Eastern Forest is the site for inspiration and healing.

Microstimulation of sensory cortex engages natural sensory representations

Cortical activity patterns occupy a small subset of possible network states. If this is due to intrinsic network properties, microstimulation of sensory cortex should evoke activity patterns resembling those observed during natural sensory input. Here, we use optical microstimulation of virally transfected layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in the mouse primary vibrissal somatosensory cortex to compare artificially evoked activity with natural activity evoked by whisker touch and movement ("whisking"). We find that photostimulation engages touch- but not whisking-responsive neurons more than expected by chance. Neurons that respond to photostimulation and touch or to touch alone exhibit higher spontaneous pairwise correlations than purely photoresponsive neurons. Exposure to several days of simultaneous touch and optogenetic stimulation raises both overlap and spontaneous activity correlations among touch and photoresponsive neurons. We thus find that cortical microstimulation engages existing cortical representations and that repeated co-presentationof natural and artificial stimulation enhances this effect.

Analysis of High School Chemistry Textbooks Used in Iran for Representations of Nature of Science

Analysis of High School Chemistry Textbooks Used in Iran for Representations of Nature of Science

Symmetric polynomials over finite fields

It is shown that two vectors with coordinates in the finite q-element field of characteristic p belong to the same orbit under the natural action of the symmetric group if each of the elementary symmetric polynomials of degree pk,2pk,…,(q−1)pk, k=0,1,2,… has the same value on them. This separating set of polynomial invariants for the natural permutation representation of the symmetric group is not far from being minimal when q=p and the dimension is large compared to p. A relatively small separating set of multisymmetric polynomials over the field of q elements is derived.

Topological indices and entropy of twisted cylinder‐nonorientable hexagonal Mobius strip

AbstractMobius strip is an infinite loop having one‐sided surface with no boundaries, also known as twisted cylinder. Möbius strips being widely used in different fields of engineering are of important nature in research. Being different in sizes and shapes, these can be visualized in Euclidean space but few cannot be. Topology of Mobius strips makes it a rare Euclidean representation of the infinite nature. Researchers expanded this concept and generalized it in the form of Klein bottles. In this article, we have derived various polynomials and respective topological indices for the Hexagonal Möbius graphs having each face as a hexagon. Also, inverse relationship between heat of formation and crystal size is developed for the calculated indices.

Counterexamples to the Zassenhaus conjecture on simple modular Lie algebras

We provide an infinite family of counterexamples to the conjecture of Zassenhaus on the solvability of the outer derivation algebra of a simple modular Lie algebra. In fact, we show that the simple modular Lie algebras H(2;(1,n))(2) of dimension 3n+1−2 in characteristic p=3 do not have a solvable outer derivation algebra for all n≥1. For n=1 this recovers the known counterexample of psl3(F). We show that the outer derivation algebra of H(2;(1,n))(2) is isomorphic to (sl2(F)⋉V(2))⊕Fn−1, where V(2) is the natural representation of sl2(F). We also study other known simple Lie algebras in characteristic three, but they do not yield a new counterexample.

An Ecofeminist Foremother? Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Oneiric Representation of Nature, Technology and Gender Roles in “Sultana’s Dream”

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s 1905 short story “Sultana’s Dream” depicts a utopian alliance between nature, science and women. As Sultana dreams of Ladyland, a country where men are “where they ought to be […], shut […] indoors”, she marvels at the harmonious relationship between all female Ladylanders and their natural environment. Not only does “the whole place look like a garden”, but also all technological innovations rely on a reasonable use of the surrounding natural resources. While the story presages the emergence of both spiritual and political ecofeminisms, the characters’ connectedness to nature and virtuous interactions with the natural world largely depend on science and technology. I argue that this marked difference from other ecofeminist utopias partly derives from Ladyland’s effort to educate all girls — an endeavour that clearly stems from Hossain’s life and works. I then document Hasanat’s claim (2013) that the women in the story defy “the masculine notion of power by gaining control over both man and nature.” Last, drawing on Chaudhuri (2016) and others, I examine how, despite its potentially satirical and dystopic dimensions, Hossain’s oneiric story develops a complex alternate way of articulating technology, nature and gender roles.

La natura umana nella tragedia di 'Delitto all'isola delle capre' di Ugo Betti

The present study analyzes the representation of human nature in ''Delitto all'isola delle capre'' (1948) by Ugo Betti. The aim of this article will be achieved through a critical and analytical study of the tragedy: to show the co-presence of Good and Evil, as essential entities in the Bettian man, who carries with him the condemnation of a sin and an existential guilt so much heavy as possible expiation. In fact, Betti's characters face their existence, characterized by the perennial conflict between the real and the ideal that is both aspired to and impossible to achieve, in a state of solitude and anguish that leads them to perform the lowest actions of human nature. However, it is in this scenario of humanity that the writer allows us to glimpse a glimmer of light for his characters, through a hope in religion which however points to a probable, and therefore not certain, way out in the world of the afterlife and not in earthly life because the Bettian God is a God who silently witnesses human decay.

Object-Assisted Question Featurization and Multi-CNN Image Feature Fusion for Visual Question Answering

Visual question answering (VQA) demands a meticulous and concurrent proficiency in image interpretation and natural language understanding to correctly answer the question about an image. The existing VQA solutions either focus only on improving the joint multi-modal embedding or on the fine-tuning of visual understanding through attention. This research, in contrast to the current trend, investigates the feasibility of an object-assisted language understanding strategy titled semantic object ranking (SOR) framework for VQA. The proposed system refines the natural language question representation with the help of detected visual objects. For multi-CNN image representation, the system employs canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The suggested model is assessed using accuracy and WUPS measures on the DAQUAR dataset. On the DAQUAR dataset, the analytical outcomes reveal that the presented system outperforms the prior state-of-the-art by a significant factor. In addition to the quantitative analysis, proper illustrations are supplied to observe the reasons for performance improvement.

Comparing acoustic, semantic, and deep neural network models of natural sound representation in perceived dissimilarity and cerebral fMRI responses

Recognizing sounds implicates the cerebral transformation of input waveforms into semantic representations. Although past research identified the superior temporal gyrus (STG) as a crucial cortical region, the computational fingerprint of these cerebral transformations remains poorly characterized. Here, we contrasted the ability of pre-published acoustic, semantic, and sound-to-event deep neural network (DNN) models to account for the behavioral estimate of the perceived dissimilarity, and for the 7T fMRI responses to natural sounds in the absence of explicit task demands. We find that both perceived dissimilarity and STG fMRI responses are better predicted by sound-to-event DNNs, and, within the DNNs, by the layers intermediate between the input acoustic representation and the output semantic embedding. Our findings indicate that STG entails intermediate acoustic-to-semantic sound representations that neither acoustic nor semantic models can account for. These representations are compositional in nature and relevant to behavior.

Exploring associations of older adults with virtual nature: a randomised factorial online survey

Abstract Loneliness and social isolation are important social determinants of wellbeing of older adults. Conversational exchanges can promote connectedness between older adults, however, conversations may not always come easy. Research shows that exposure to nature-based stimuli such as pictures and videos can stimulate social aspirations and trigger associations that could facilitate conversations, in particular when nature scenery is perceived as fascinating, mysterious, spacious and suited for social interaction. Therefore, this study investigated whether exposure to these nature characteristics (high versus low) lead to associations that could act as conversational material. A randomised factorial design, using a virtual reality-based approach for experimental control, led to 17 different virtual representations of nature (VN). In total, 150 participants (60 years and older) were recruited for an online survey. Spontaneous associations were coded on personal engagement and valence. The number of associations was measured with one multiple-choice question. VN exposure successfully triggered personally engaging and positively valenced associations and were related to multiple associations, in particular when the VN were high on mystery. Furthermore, positive effects of VN exposure was more pronounced for participants with high (rather than low) levels of nature relatedness and many (rather than few) available nature opportunities. These findings indicate that VN exposure provides fertile ground for conversations as a means to promote connectedness and social wellbeing of older adults.

ALMOST CYCLIC REGULAR SEMISIMPLE ELEMENTS IN IRREDUCIBLE REPRESENTATIONS OF SIMPLE ALGEBRAIC GROUPS

Let G be a simple linear algebraic group defined over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p ≥ 0 and let ϕ be a nontrivial p-restricted irreducible representation of G. Let T be a maximal torus of G and s ϵ T. We say that s is Ad-regular if α(s) ≠ β(s) for all distinct T-roots α and β of G. Our main result states that if all but one of the eigenvalues of ϕ(s) are of multiplicity 1 then, with a few specified exceptions, s is Ad-regular. This can be viewed as an extension of our earlier work, in which we show that, under the same hypotheses, either s is regular or G is a classical group and ϕ is “essentially” (a twist of) the natural representation of G.

Remote Sensing Imagery Object Detection Model Compression via Tucker Decomposition

Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have made significant progress, their deployment onboard is still challenging because of their complexity and high processing cost. Tensors provide a natural and compact representation of CNN weights via suitable low-rank approximations. A novel decomposed module called DecomResnet based on Tucker decomposition was proposed to deploy a CNN object detection model on a satellite. We proposed a remote sensing image object detection model compression framework based on low-rank decomposition which consisted of four steps, namely (1) model initialization, (2) initial training, (3) decomposition of the trained model and reconstruction of the decomposed model, and (4) fine-tuning. To validate the performance of the decomposed model in our real mission, we constructed a dataset containing only two classes of objects based on the DOTA and HRSC2016. The proposed method was comprehensively evaluated on the NWPU VHR-10 dataset and the CAST-RS2 dataset created in this work. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method, which was based on Resnet-50, could achieve up to 4.44 times the compression ratio and 5.71 times the speedup ratio with merely a 1.9% decrease in the mAP (mean average precision) of the CAST-RS2 dataset and a 5.3% decrease the mAP of the NWPU VHR-10 dataset.

Deep graph learning in molecular docking: Advances and opportunities

One of the main computational tools for structure-based drug discovery is molecular docking. Due to the natural representation of molecules as graphs (a set of nodes/atoms connected through edges/bonds), Deep Graph Learning has been successfully applied for multiple tasks on this area. This work presents an overview of Deep Graph Learning methods developed within this research field, as well as opportunities for future development.

Conceptualization of Nature in Chinese and Russian Folklore Tales

The purpose of the study is to analyze nature as a basic linguistic and cultural concept in Chinese and Russian folklore tales, to identify common and different in its verbalization and perception in folklore tales of two linguistic cultures. The object of the study is Russian and Chinese folklore fairy tales. The subject is a comparative analysis of linguistic means of conceptualizing nature in Russian and Chinese fairy tales. The author examines the descriptions of nature in Chinese and Russian folk tales, the relationship of the heroes of fairy tales with nature. Particular attention is paid to the linguo-axiological aspect of nature and the identification of differences in the linguistic representation of nature and attitudes towards it in the two linguistic cultures. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the lack of research on the concept of nature in a comparative aspect in Chinese and Russian linguistic cultures. As a result, it was found that in Chinese and Russian folklore tales nature is described as a basic value – a source of kindness and harmony. The author comes to the conclusion that the main differences in the conceptualization of nature in Chinese and Russian folklore tales are in the expression of the idea of fighting nature. The heroes of Chinese fairy tales resist the challenges of nature, while Russian fairy-tale characters use nature as a source of magical powers, with the help of which they subsequently achieve success.

POST-APOCALYPTIC IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN AYN RAND’S ANTHEM WITH REFERENCE TO CULTURE/NATURE DUALITY

The present article endeavors to explicate the process of identity construction in Ayn Rand's post-apocalyptic dystopian novel, Anthem. The utilisation of language and the dissemination of symbolic meanings are significant factors that contribute to the formation of identity, which enchains individuals, transforming them into obedient subjects. Fiske's perspective on identity construction elucidates the interplay between power and resistance, which appears to be absent in this post-apocalyptic work. The imperialising power is predominantly responsible for the mechanism of identity formation in the subjectivity of the characters, as there is no discernible systematic resistance to the dominant representations of power throughout the novel. Despite the absence of the duality of power and resistance, the duality of nature and culture is at play, significantly impacting the way identity is constructed. The imperialising power aims to eradicate or limit representations of nature, as the semantic burden that nature carries poses a threat to its existence. We aim to clarify how the imperialising power responds to the representations and meanings that nature embodies. Lastly, we posit that the imperialising power's reaction towards nature is stronger in post-apocalyptic contexts, where representations of nature are highly restricted, confined only to the "Uncharted Forest."

A network-based analysis to assess COVID-19 disruptions in the Bogotá BRT system.

The global COVID-19 crisis has severely affected mass transit in the cities of the global south. Fear of widespread propagation in public spaces and the dramatic decrease in human mobility due to lockdowns have resulted in a significant reduction of public transport options. We analyze the case of TransMilenio in Bogotá, a massive Bus Rapid Transit system that is the main mode of transport for an urban area of roughly 10 million inhabitants. Concerns over social distancing and new health regulations reduced the number of trips to under 20% of its historical values during extended periods of time during the lockdowns. This has sparked a renewed interest in developing innovative data-driven responses to COVID-19 resulting in large corpora of TransMilenio data being made available to the public. In this paper we use a database updated daily with individual passenger card swipe validation microdata including entry time, entry station, and a hash of the card's ID. The opportunity of having daily detailed minute-to-minute ridership information and the challenge of extracting useful insights from the massive amount of raw data (∼1,000,000 daily records) require the development of tailored data analysis approaches. Our objective is to use the natural representation of urban mobility offered by networks to make pairwise quantitative similarity measurements between daily commuting patterns and then use clustering techniques to reveal behavioral disruptions as well as the most affected geographical areas due to the different pandemic stages. This method proved to be efficient for the analysis of large amount of data and may be used in the future to make temporal analysis of similarly large datasets in urban contexts.