Outer Circle Research Articles

Corrosion Damage Evolution Study of the Offshore Cable-Stayed Bridge Anchorage System Based on Accelerated Corrosion Test

The cable-stayed bridge anchorage system is prone to serious corrosion problems in the offshore environment, threatening its service safety. Based on the copper accelerated salt spray (CASS) test, the anchorage system was subjected to accelerated corrosion and then dissected along the axial direction to study the corrosion damage evolution of the internal structure. This revealed the evolution of corrosion damage in the anchorage system of offshore cable-stayed bridges. The results show that in the offshore environment, a large number of corrosion factors enter the interior of the cable anchorage system through the splicing seam at the junction of the anchor cup and the connecting barrel, and spread to both ends, thus causing corrosion damage to the anchor cup, connecting barrel, filling medium and cable steel wires. Inside the cable of the anchorage system, cross-sections with a higher corrosion level on the outer circle steel wires will also have a higher overall corrosion level. The outer circle steel wires are less able to meet the strength requirements, because they withstand most of the corrosion effects, and the corrosion pits on the surface of the steel wires will render them much weaker than the design tensile strength and fracture. After the CASS test, the ductility of cable steel wires decreases from the inner circle to the outer circle, and the higher the corrosion level of steel wires, the more obvious the brittle indications; the steel wires tend to undergo brittle failure. In the design and manufacture of the cable-stayed bridge anchorage system, special attention should be paid to the corrosion protection of the splicing seam, as well as the corrosion condition and residual strength of steel wires in the outer circle of the cable, to delay the degradation of the mechanical properties and brittle damage of the anchorage system.

Recruiting English teachers from the Outer Circle: perspectives of Taiwanese students

ABSTRACT This study explores Taiwanese university students' attitudes towards recruiting teachers from the Outer Circle (OC) in response to Taiwan's high demand for English teachers. Forty-six first-year non-English majors from a large university in northern Taiwan participated in the study, which used four instruments. Results showed that, given the choice between Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle teachers, Taiwanese freshmen students preferred teachers from the Inner and Expanding Circles over those from the OC. Despite this, interview data revealed that students would consider OC English teachers under certain conditions, such as those with less distracting regional accents. Other factors that positively impacted students' perception of OC teachers included their role in facilitating communication with native-English speakers and the cultural diversity they brought to the campus. However, students perceived OC English teachers' speech as unintelligible and believed that American English contributed most to international communication. The study's implications for teacher recruitment are discussed.

Relationship between macular intervortex vein anastomosis and optical coherence tomography biomarkers in chronic central serous chorioretinopathy

BackgroundsTo evaluate the optical coherence tomography (OCT) biomarkers of patients with central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) according to the presence or absence of direct anatomical relation to intervortex vein anastomosis (IVA) on indocyanine green angiography. MethodsWe reviewed the records of 39 patients with chronic CSC. Patients were categorized in 2 groups: presence of IVA(Group A) or absence of IVA(Group B) in the macular region. Localization of IVA was categorized in 3 areas according to ETDRS grid:inner 1 mm circle (area-1), 1–3 mm middle circle (area-2) and 3–6 mm outer circle (area-3). ResultsThere were 31 eyes in Group A,21 eyes in Group B. Mean age of the patients was 52.5 ± 11.3years in Group A,47.2 ± 11years in Group B(p<0.001).Mean initial visual acuity (VA) was 0.38±0.38LogMAR in Group A, 0.19±0.21LogMAR in Group B(p<0.001).Mean subfoveal choroidal thickness(SFCT) was 436.3 ± 134.3µ in Group A,480.2 ± 136.6µ in Group B(p<0.001).Localization of IVA in area-1 was correlated with inner choroidal attenuation (ICA) and leakage on IVA(p = 0.011,p = 0.02). Localization of IVA in area-3 was correlated with irregular lesions on RPE(p = 0.042).Smokestack configuration,intraretinal cysts and ICA were correlated with worse initial VA(p<0.001,p = 0.001 and p = 0.04).Shaggy subtype of photoreceptor disruption was associated with better initial VA(p = 0.003). ConclusionsWe detected older age, worse initial VA and thinner SFCT in patients with chronic CSC and macular region IVA(m-IVA). Long term follow-up of patients with and without m-IVA may exhibit the difference in treatment outcomes and development of neovasculopathy.

Shell field morphogenesis in the polyplacophoran mollusk Acanthochitona rubrolineata

BackgroundThe polyplacophoran mollusks (chitons) possess serially arranged shell plates. This feature is unique among mollusks and believed to be essential to explore the evolution of mollusks as well as their shells. Previous studies revealed several cell populations in the dorsal epithelium (shell field) of polyplacophoran larvae and their roles in the formation of shell plates. Nevertheless, they provide limited molecular information, and shell field morphogenesis remains largely uninvestigated.ResultsIn the present study, we investigated shell field development in the chiton Acanthochitona rubrolineata based on morphological characteristics and molecular patterns. A total of four types of tissue could be recognized from the shell field of A. rubrolineata. The shell field comprised not only the centrally located, alternatively arranged plate fields and ridges, but also the tissues surrounding them, which were the precursors of the girdle and we termed as the girdle field. The girdle field exhibited a concentric organization composed of two circularly arranged tissues, and spicules were only developed in the outer circle. Dynamic engrailed expression and F-actin (filamentous actin) distributions revealed relatively complicated morphogenesis of the shell field. The repeated units (plate fields and ridges) were gradually established in the shell field, seemingly different from the manners used in the segmentation of Drosophila or vertebrates. The seven repeated ridges also experienced different modes of ontogenesis from each other. In the girdle field, the presumptive spicule-formation cells exhibited different patterns of F-actin aggregations as they differentiate.ConclusionsThese results reveal the details concerning the structure of polyplacophoran shell field as well as its morphogenesis. They would contribute to exploring the mechanisms of polyplacophoran shell development and molluscan shell evolution.

Early Retinal Microvascular Changes Assessed with Swept-Source OCT Angiography in Type 1 Diabetes Patients without Retinopathy

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease that can lead to vision loss when diabetic retinopathy develops. Retinal microvascular alterations occur before the appearance of clinical signs on a fundus examination. This study aimed to analyze retinal vascular parameters on optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) in patients with type 1 diabetes without diabetic retinopathy in comparison with non-diabetic volunteers. This cross-sectional study was conducted at Dijon University Hospital from 2018 to 2020. Vascular densities were measured using macular OCT-A. In total, 98 diabetes patients and 71 non-diabetic volunteers were enrolled. A statistically significant lower vascular density of the inner circle was found in the superficial capillary plexus (SCP) in the diabetes group (p < 0.01). There was a statistically significant correlation between central vascular density in the deep capillary plexus (DCP) and total daily insulin intake (p = 0.042); furthermore, use of the FreeStyle Libre (FSL) device was associated with higher vascular densities in both the SCP (p = 0.034 for outer circle density) and DCP (p < 0.01 for inner circle density and p = 0.023 for outer circle density). Retinal microvascularization was early-altered in type 1 diabetes, and using the FSL device seemed to preserve retinal microvascularization.

Multicultural Competence in English Language Pedagogy: An Analysis of Cultural Values in Indonesian Primary ELT Textbooks

This study aims at investigating how different cultures are depicted in textbooks. The textbooks were selected by examining their reference to Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle countries, including cultural themes which represent these countries. This study’s data corpus consisted of two EFL Primary textbooks, Hang Out 4 and Hang Out 5. Employing Critical Discourse Analysis as the research design, this study adopted two frameworks to analyze the data: Kachru’s (1986) Concentric Circles to categorize the cultural contexts and Pfister and Borzelli’s (1977) categorization to identify the cultural aspects represented. The findings revealed that the cultural representation in the textbooks reflected significant diversity. Particularly within the inner circle, the United States was the nation whose culture was best represented. While in outer and expanding circles, East Asian countries were dominant and included all five categories. However, Indonesia as the source culture has little reference in this textbook.

Laser‐Induced Carbonization for Anticounterfeiting Tags (Adv. Funct. Mater. 17/2023)

Laser-Induced Carbonization Laser-induced carbonization is a viable method for creating anticounterfeiting tags on flexible printed circuit boards. In article number 2211762, Sunkook Kim, Hogun Park, and co-workers illustrate that using a laser, a pattern can be configured in any desired shape, such as a fingerprint. The laser beam is used to create random size carbonized spots that are distributed according to the pattern inputted into the laser. The pattern's outer circles can be extracted and digitized for authentication purposes.

“We Can Manage This Corona Disaster”: Psycho-Social Experiences of a Diverse Suburban Middle-Class Community in South Africa: Interview-Based Study

The study concerns psycho-social domains experienced in a diverse suburban middle-class community, reporting the most positive cases and the deepest suffering, and interactions towards adaptation in stressful situations, such as the Coronavirus pandemic. This qualitative investigation used a descriptive design, with a strengths-based perspective directing a two-phased method. Through non-probability convenience sampling, 80 participants completed a web-based qualitative questionnaire (phase one). From those, 20 purposely selected volunteers participated in individual, face-to-face, open-ended, and unstructured interviews (phase 2). Themes, interpreted as one set, show how strengths and resilience appear, despite extreme shock and uncertainty. Transitional processes in psycho-social spheres reveal conscious decisions towards dynamic engagement, embracing change, reflecting on life’s value, and regarding novel meaningful priorities in contrast with “before”. Most prominent relational spaces have human connections in the inner (close) and outer (community) circles. Personal, meaningful relationships strengthen social bonds. Appreciative inquiry (AI) assisted in the transitional process to co-construct awareness of the positive core, emotional agility, and pride in embracing and expanding on newly developed strengths. Interpreted inductively, meaning described in abstracted knowledge can be transferred to and integrated with other contexts, identifying new initiatives and trans-, multi-, and inter-disciplinary debates mitigating psycho-social consequences and fostering resilience during disasters.

Relationships Between Young/Older Japanese Women and Filipino/Western English Teachers: Age, Gender, Ethnicity and English-Speaker Status

Pre-pandemic studies indicate that East Asian students’ migration to ASEAN Outer Circle nations to study English by no means marks their departure from an idealized anglophone English world. Via research conducted during the pandemic when online learning had become mainstream, this study further explores the significance of such students’ English study with Outer Circle teachers. A questionnaire survey was administered to 200 Japanese female English learners aged 20–59 who have taken English lessons provided by both western and Filipino teachers. The textual data analyses reveal that the respondents’ essentialized appreciation of Filipino teachers’ ‘Asianness’ and their English-as-a-second-language background is caused by their identity as Asian English learners struggling to acquire ‘correct’ English. Meanwhile, quantitative analyses identify the presence of many Japanese women who study English as a hobby irrespective of their age and teachers’ ethnicity. This finding provides an additional insight about Japanese female English learners who are well discussed in light of marginalized young Japanese women's longing for western men from/in the idealized West. Moreover, based on the statistical analysis of age differences in reasons for taking private English lessons and concern about teachers’ accent, this study discusses a possible impact of teacher–student age/gender matching on young or mature Japanese female English learners’ perceptions about lessons provided by predominantly young Filipino women or western men. It concludes with suggestions for future research that examines the significance of learning English from Filipino and other Outer Circle English teachers amid the pervasive native English norms tied to Inner Circle English teachers.

Why help others? Insights from rodent to human early childhood research.

Helping behavior are actions aiming at assisting another individual in need or to relieve their distress. The occurrence of this behavior not only depends on automated physiological mechanisms, such as imitation or emotional contagion, that is, the individual's emotion and physiological state matching with others, but also needs motivation to sustain. From a comparative and developmental perspective, we discover that the motivation for helping behavior has a deep foundation both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. For example, empathic concern for others, relieving personal distress and the desire for social contact are universal motivations across rodents, non-human primates and human early childhoods. Therefore, a circle-layered model integrating evidences for motivation for helping behavior from rodent to human early childhood research is proposed: the inner circle contains the emotional-behavioral system and the outer circle contains the affective-cognitive system. The application of this model has significance for both behavioral neuroscience research and cultivating prosocial behavior in human society.

Design of wearable antenna for ISM band application

A crescent-shaped wearable antenna is designed at 5.4 GHz for ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) band application and it is presented in this paper. The crescent shape is a combination of two circles and then the inner circle is removed from the outer circle for achieving a crescent shape. The crescent-shaped wearable antenna used jeans fabric as a substrate and it provides comfort and greater flexibility to wear on the human body. The proposed wearable antenna has a small thickness. The measured radiation parameters of wearable antenna-like return loss and VSWR are agreed well with performance evaluation simulations. It is simulated using HFSS software.

The Measurements and Analysis of Spatial-Temporal Variations of Human Development Index Based on Planetary Boundaries in China: Evidence from Provincial-Level Data

It is necessary to pursue the economic and social development of humanity to cope with the challenges of the global ecological environment within the constraints of planetary boundaries. For constructing the evaluation model of human development considering the earth pressure from the sub-national level, and observing the changes of human development level under the earth pressure in China in recent years, this paper constructs the PB-HDI (Planetary Boundaries-Human Development Index) index to measure the human development level under planetary boundaries in 30 Chinese provinces of 2010, 2014, 2017, and 2020; and carries out the analysis of evolutionary characteristics and spatial heterogeneity inspired by the path of balancing the relationship between environmental protection and economic development in China. We found: (1) the regional PB-HDI differences show a convergence trend, with a gradual decrease in low-level provinces; (2) the regional heterogeneity of PB-HDI is obvious. The differences between eastern provinces are the largest; (3) resources and environment constitute the outer circle of economic and social development, forming a “doughnut” inclusion pattern that discourages high-level development beyond the boundary and low-level development within the boundary. In general, there are significant differences in economic development, environmental protection level, social security capacity, industrial structure, innovation level, policy environment, and other basic conditions among different regions of China, and sustainable development paths need to be determined according to local conditions. This study is critical for expanding the application of the sub-national human development assessment for global stress and optimizing China’s sustainable development path.

Governing diversity in the multilevel European public space

The issue of working out a viable relationship between accepting and/or living with diversity on the one hand and fostering integration on the other has occupied public debates, political agendas, and social sciences for decades. Our point of departure is that the contemporary European context provides distinct challenges. We need to understand how postmigrant integration is shaped and conditioned by the European public space understood as a geographical space; a composite of legally and institutionally constituted entities; covering nations, regions, and cities mainly within but also beyond the EU; and a site of interaction, and public expression of contestation and cooperation. In so doing, we have to contend with the fact that such important perspectives for handling diversity as multiculturalism, interculturalism, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism occupy distinct roles within the European public space whose governance is multi-levelled yet not reducible to a single tiered system. The European public space is more encompassing than the EU even while that level of governance has some important regulative functions upon member states and to some extent even on non-EU states such as Norway and the UK, especially in what we refer to as the outer circle. While the national level is the most powerful normatively and by most other measures on the inclusion of difference (our inner circle), municipalities also contribute to the constitution of this space. We explore the logics of our four ‘isms’ and of the tiers of governance and their interaction with each other, both the isms in tensions and syntheses with each other and differentially in relation to the levels of governance. This is an exercise that has not been done before. Our purpose is to suggest a new normativity that might feasibly achieve a broader degree of support and success than any of the isms have achieved alone.

Effect of Hypercholesterolemia, Systemic Arterial Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus on Peripapillary and Macular Vessel Density on Superficial Vascular Plexus in Glaucoma

Vascular factors are involved in the development of glaucoma, including diseases such as hypercholesterolemia (HC), systemic arterial hypertension (SAH), and diabetes mellitus (DM). The aim of this study was to determine the effect of glaucoma disease on peripapillary vessel density (sPVD) and macular vessel density (sMVD) on the superficial vascular plexus, controlling differences on comorbidities such as SAH, DM and HC between glaucoma patients and normal subjects. In this prospective, unicenter, observational cross-sectional study, sPVD and sMVD were measured in 155 glaucoma patients and 162 normal subjects. Differences between normal subjects and glaucoma patients' groups were analyzed. A linear regression model with 95% confidence and 80% statistical power was performed. Parameters with greater effect on sPVD were glaucoma diagnosis, gender, pseudophakia and DM. Glaucoma patients had a sPVD 1.2% lower than healthy subjects (Beta slope 1.228; 95%CI 0.798-1.659, p < 0.0001). Women presented 1.19% more sPVD than men (Beta slope 1.190; 95%CI 0.750-1.631, p < 0.0001), and phakic patients presented 1.7% more sPVD than men (Beta slope 1.795; 95%CI 1.311-2.280, p < 0.0001). Furthermore, DM patients had 0.9% lower sPVD than non-diabetic patients (Beta slope 0.925; 95%CI 0.293-1.558, p = 0.004). SAH and HC did not affect most of the sPVD parameters. Patients with SAH and HC showed 1.5% lower sMVD in the outer circle than subjects without those comorbidities (Beta slope 1.513; 95%CI 0.216-2.858, p = 0.021 and 1.549; 95%CI 0.240-2.858, p = 0.022 respectively. Glaucoma diagnosis, previous cataract surgery, age and gender seem to have greater influence than the presence of SAH, DM and HC on sPVD and sMVD, particularly sPVD.

Academic language-related challenges, self-reported proficiency, and academic success at an EMI university in Brunei

ABSTRACT This article reports an empirical study that investigates academic language challenges faced by university students in an Outer Circle context with almost four decades of English-medium instruction (EMI) education . The study also examines the relationship between students’ reported language challenges and their perceived academic success in EMI courses, as well as their self-rated proficiency in English. Quantitative analyses on questionnaire data collected from 198 undergraduate students indicate that Bruneian students did not generally experience major language-related challenges in their EMI courses, although academic writing and speaking were at times problematic. Furthermore, language challenges were found to be significant predictors of students’ perceived academic success in EMI but their self-rated English proficiency was not, suggesting that students’ beliefs about their language abilities and competence were not applied to the academic context. Finally, some implications in relation to early exposure to EMI education, and enhancing the provision of language support through English for academic purposes courses, are discussed.

Impact of English Proficiency on National Prosperity: Comparative Study on the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle

English has become an international language, with a large number of governments promoting its study for national prosperity and economic development. However, there have been only a few empirical studies concerning the impact of English proficiency on the economic development of countries. These studies utilize economic development indicators such as GDP, GDP per capita, as well as GDI. They also adopt various English proficiency indicators: average TOEFL scores, average EF Standard English Test scores, and a comparison of the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle. They focus on the influence of English proficiency on economic development and foreign trade, but not on prosperity, which consists of some elements other than these. Furthermore, results in this field significantly change depending on the types of indicators. Therefore, further research is necessary with various indicators to draw a more complete picture. This study adopts the Legatum Prosperity Index as a prosperity measurement and compares the Expanding Circle and the Outer Circle with a t-test. The result shows that the former is superior to the later. The study further investigates the situation in Asia and Africa, since these regions have a significant number of Outer-Circle countries. The research outcome indicates that there is no significant statistical difference between the two circles. These results suggest that having a large number of people who have high English proficiency does not always lead nations to prosperity.

Startups and circular economy strategies: Profile differences, barriers and enablers

Circular economy practices contribute to achieving sustainability and alleviating the consequences of value chain disruptions and surging prices of energy and raw materials. While startups are increasingly recognized as a powerful engine for innovation processes needed to support this transition, empirical studies on the selection and implementation of circular strategies among startups remains scarce. In this paper, we report findings from the first academic survey on circular startups (N = 165) that allows for multivariate statistical analyses, considering both personal and company characteristics, and perspectives of the entrepreneurs involved. This survey includes startups with varying degrees of implementation levels of a set of 10 circular strategies at different startup lifecycle stages. Our results suggest that younger startup entrepreneurs tend to focus on inner circle strategies, while older startup entrepreneurs rather engage in outer circle strategies or no circular strategies at all. Female startup entrepreneurs are found to be less inclined to combine multiple circular strategies, and business-to-business and business-to-government market segments tend to be frontrunners for circular business models. Circular startups mostly acknowledge sustainability and circularity as a comparative advantage, and startup entrepreneurs with a migrant background seem to be more optimistic to start a profitable circular business. Our results suggest that there is no such thing as ‘the’ circular economy startup, so we recommend policy makers to develop tailor-made solutions to support startups implementing different circular strategies.

Double-Center-Based Iris Localization and Segmentation in Cooperative Environment with Visible Illumination.

Iris recognition has been considered as one of the most accurate and reliable biometric technologies, and it is widely used in security applications. Iris segmentation and iris localization, as important preprocessing tasks for iris biometrics, jointly determine the valid iris part of the input eye image; however, iris images that have been captured in user non-cooperative and visible illumination environments often suffer from adverse noise (e.g., light reflection, blurring, and glasses occlusion), which challenges many existing segmentation-based parameter-fitting localization methods. To address this problem, we propose a novel double-center-based end-to-end iris localization and segmentation network. Different from many previous iris localization methods, which use massive post-process methods (e.g., integro-differential operator-based or circular Hough transforms-based) on iris or contour mask to fit the inner and outer circles, our method directly predicts the inner and outer circles of the iris on the feature map. In our method, an anchor-free center-based double-circle iris-localization network and an iris mask segmentation module are designed to directly detect the circle boundary of the pupil and iris, and segment the iris region in an end-to-end framework. To facilitate efficient training, we propose a concentric sampling strategy according to the center distribution of the inner and outer iris circles. Extensive experiments on the four challenging iris data sets show that our method achieves excellent iris-localization performance; in particular, it achieves 84.02% box IoU and 89.15% mask IoU on NICE-II. On the three sub-datasets of MICHE, our method achieves 74.06% average box IoU, surpassing the existing methods by 4.64%.

Critical discourse analysis of the second inaugural speech of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed

The purpose of the study is to investigate language use in Abiy Ahmed’s second inaugural speech. The study aims to identify the critical discourse analysis elements reflected in the text, as well as the specific socio-cognitive elements used to facilitate communication. To meet these objectives, the study employs CDA as a research method and theoretical framework. As analytical frameworks, Van Dijk’s multidimensional critical discourse analysis and socio-cognitive model were used. The study revealed that at micro-level analysis, lexical items, pronouns, figures of speech, and sayings were used to construct unity—the dominant ideology. Similarly, themacrostructure analysis has shown that topics and macro structures were designed to show unity ideology. To create a unity discourse, cognitive elements such as authority, evidentiality, polarization, and victimization were used by the speaker. However, the text represents the in-groups positively and the out-groups negatively. In short, the language used in the inaugural speech has been used to build unity discourse. The speaker used history as a source of unifying rhetorical devices to persuade the audience and to achieve, exert, and maintain power over them. Furthermore, Abiy’s inaugural speech is primarily comprised of praise for his inner circle and criticism for his outer circle.

Planar Algebras in Braided Tensor Categories

We generalize Jones’ planar algebras by internalising the notion to a pivotal braided tensor category C \mathcal {C} . To formulate the notion, the planar tangles are now equipped with additional ‘anchor lines’ which connect the inner circles to the outer circle. We call the resulting notion an anchored planar algebra. If we restrict to the case when C \mathcal {C} is the category of vector spaces, then we recover the usual notion of a planar algebra. Building on our previous work on categorified traces, we prove that there is an equivalence of categories between anchored planar algebras in C \mathcal {C} and pivotal module tensor categories over C \mathcal {C} equipped with a chosen self-dual generator. Even in the case of usual planar algebras, the precise formulation of this theorem, as an equivalence of categories, has not appeared in the literature. Using our theorem, we describe many examples of anchored planar algebras.