Contact Situations Research Articles

Marseille en V.O. ? La négociation des langues dans des interactions entre touristes internationaux et conseillers touristiques

Abstract Marseille is slowly transforming into an important international tourist destination following sustained efforts by city authorities. The influx of international tourists has led to an intensification and diversification of language contact situations in the already highly multilingual city. This chapter aims to provide an analysis of in situ language practices in one of Marseille’s key tourist contexts in order to explore the sociolinguistic changes taking place. Using interactional data taken from a long-term fieldwork project undertaken in Marseille’s Tourist Office, this chapter focuses on the negotiation and selection of the principal language of interaction in exchanges between international tourists and tourist advisers. These moments are shown to be crucial to the facilitation of communication and the co-construction of meaning and it is shown how speakers mobilise two strategies - explicit requests and tacit negotiations - in these sequences. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the wider sociolinguistic dynamics underpinning these practices.

A linguistic analysis of Cypriot Greek-English compound verbs

Attested in many language contact situations and characterized as a potential “universal of codeswitching” (Edwards and Gardner-Chloros, 2007:74), bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) remain perplexing constructions for many scholars. Drawing from a dataset of 338 instances, and from a language pair that has never been studied in-depth before, this paper examines Cypriot Greek - English compound verbs. Cypriot Greek is a non-standardized Greek linguistic variety, and the native language of Greek Cypriots living on Cyprus and overseas. These bilingual verbs are comprised of the verb kamno (‘do’), or less occasionally ʝinome (‘become’), and more often than not an English non-finite verb form. This study examines this construction so as to uncover its characteristics and the role that each part in the construction plays; the study shows what kind of formations made with kamno or ʝinome + an English language element have been found in the data, and whether they are all instances of bilingual compound verbs. It also aims to explain how their formation is possible since neither Greek nor English has this construction in monolingual discourse (Gardner-Chloros, 1995), and why BCVs arose in the first place given that Greek has another way to use verbs from other languages. Employing the work of Muysken (2000) and Backus (1996), this study shows that there are four different types of constructions in the data involving the verb kamno or ʝinome and an English element but asserts that only those with the two parts of the construction forming a single predicate should be regarded as BCVs. It is argued that even though the Greek language does not have a construction with kamno or ʝinome and a Greek non-finite verb, the occurrence of BCVs is possible because of a Greek native construction which involves kamno + a Greek derived noun. The study then claims that speakers seem to find English non-finite verbs to be congruent (Sebba, 1998) with the Greek derived noun and use them in its place in the bilingual constructions.

Dzielenie przestrzeni, praktyki graniczenia. Parkowanie, własność i przynależność na polskich osiedlach mieszkaniowych

Space gains significance through processes of social differentiation and bordering, and in consequence is connected with the creation and maintenance of social divisions. The author seeks confirmation of this fact at the level of everyday practices in housing settlements, tracking the mechanisms used by people in situations of contact and confrontation with others in the social space. He sets himself several aims: (1) he attempts to analyze selected spatial practices (parking within the settlement, the creation of belonging), reflecting the internal structuring strategies of housing settlements; (2) he points to the causes of that structuring, that is, the main contexts in which these practices occur and are strengthened; (3) he highlights the important role of space in processes of bordering and differentiation. Practices connected with parking and the creation of belonging, although apparently disparate and deriving from contrary spheres of social life make it possible to hypothesize that the striving for separation and the increased importance of space determine the organization of borders, divisions, and social relations in housing settlements.

Intervention in local textile-making as a Tahuantinsuyu strategy for linking Northwest Argentina with the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile (A.D. 1350–1500)

Based on the premise that textiles can contain information about situations of intercultural contact, including their degree of intensity, a group of textiles recovered from the Doncellas site in Northwest Argentina—some housed in the Ethnographic Museum Juan B. Ambrosetti (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and others in the Archeological Museum Dr. E. Casanova (Tilcara, Argentina)—were examined and related information was updated to bring to light the relational dynamics between the Salar of Atacama and neighboring territories that may have impacted both the Salar and the Loa River basin. In this paper we focus on one of those territories, Northwest Argentina, with the assumption that links established between that region and the Atacama would have intensified in the period ca. A.D. 1350–1500. This analysis led to our proposal that a process of expansion occurred in the Atacama at the time that was linked to the interests of the Inka Empire.

Synergetic Learning Control Paradigm for Redundant Robot to Enhance Error-Energy Index

In order to perform energetically efficient motion as in human control, so-called optimization-based approach is commonly used in both robotics and neuroscience. Such an optimization approach can provide optimal solution when the prior dynamics information of the manipulator and the environment is explicitly given. However, the environment, where the robot faces with in a real world rarely has such a situation. The dynamics conditions change by the contact situation or the hand load for the manipulation task. Simple computational paradigm to realize both adaptability and learning is essential to bridge the gap between learning and control process in redundancy. We verify a novel synergetic learning control paradigm in reaching task of redundant manipulator. The performance in handling different dynamics conditions is evaluated in dual criteria of error-energy (E-E) coupling without prior knowledge of the given environmental dynamics and with model-optimization-free approach. This paper aims at investigating the ability of phenomenological optimization with the proposed human-inspired learning control paradigm for environmental dynamics recognition and adaptation, which is different from conventional model optimization approach. E-E index is introduced to evaluate not only the tracking performance, but also the error reduction rate per the energy consumption.

Turkish as a Mediterranean language

AbstractThis paper focuses on linguistic contacts between Turkish as the receiving language and other languages of the Mediterranean area (Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, French, Greek, Ibero-Romance varieties, Italian, Serbo-Croatian). In the first part, a general overview is given of the contact situation and historical background; in the second, the treatment of loanwords from the above-mentioned languages in Turkish lexicography is sketched and briefly discussed.

Croatian in the Mediterranean context: language contacts in the Early Modern Croatian lexicography

AbstractThis paper offers an insight into the way language contacts in the Mediterranean context were dealt with in the Croatian lexicography of the 16th and 17th centuries. The first part provides the historical background of the contact situations from the 7th century up to the end of the 17th century, focusing on Dalmatia. The second part represents an analysis of Dalmatian-Romance, Italo-Romance and Turkish loanwords in five dictionaries (Vrančić, Kašić, Mikalja, Tanzlingher-Zanotti, and Ritter Vitezović), reflecting the results of the language contacts on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea and in its immediate hinterland. Positive and negative attitudes of the five authors towards language-borrowing are discussed, as some important differences can be observed, particularly with regard to Italo-Romance loanwords.

Vanadium Nitride as an Efficient and Stable Promotor for Pd‐Catalyzed Methanol Electrooxidation in Alkaline Media

AbstractPd/C electrocatalysts containing VN with different morphology (particles (Pd‐VN(particles)/C) and plates (Pd‐VN(plates)/C)) were prepared by a simple reduction with sodium borohydride and their electrocatalytic performance for methanol oxidation was investigated. The Pd‐VN(particles)/C and Pd‐VN(plates)/C performed better activity, stronger resistance to CO poisoning and higher stability for methanol oxidation compared with Pd/C by the measurements of cyclic voltammograms (CVs), CO stripping voltammetry and chronoamperometry (CA), respectively. The X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) and electrochemical impedance spectrums (EIS) tests were conducted for exploring the role of VN. It is found that the promotion effects of VN can be explained by a bifunctional mechanism and the increase in metallic Pd in electrocatalysts containing VN. Furthermore, the different promotive extents between the VN with different morphology are attributed to the differences of the crystallinity and contact situation of Pd and VN.

Friction Properties of Gel Rings and Plates

Recently, the development of high strength gel has advanced, and it is at the stage of application to mechanical parts utilizing the low friction properties of gel. It is expected that the low friction gel has an ability to increase the energy efficiency in various fields. In this study, we evaluated the friction properties of DN gel ring-shaped sealant by using unique friction measurement apparatus and investigated the effect of cross-linker ratio on friction properties of gel plates to apply the gel materials to mechanical parts. In the case of ring gel, we measured the frictions of rotational direction and vertical direction (see figure). We revealed that friction force along vertical direction was decreased with increase in rotational speed, and the friction force along rotational direction was increased with rotational speed. In addition, we measured the friction force of gel plates with various concentration of cross-linker. The hardness of gel is strongly influenced by the concentration of cross-linker. The results indicate that the friction forced of the soft gel is larger than that of hard gel. The cause of this behavior is difference of contact situations such as contact area. Figure 1

Intergroup contact and its right-wing ideological constraint

ABSTRACTThis paper extends previous intergroup contact research by examining how face-to-face interaction relates to opposition to immigration across the mass-level ideological divide. Opposition to immigration refers to calls for restrictive immigration policies. Analyses show: a) that intergroup contact is associated with less opposition to immigration and b) that political ideology moderates this association. More specifically, rightists do not generalise their positive contact experiences to the same extent as leftists. Right-wing ideological values clearly constrain the outcomes of intergroup contact, suggesting that contact situations involve active value and belief defense. Additional robustness analyses also show that the moderating role of political ideology is stronger in superficial contact settings than in intimate arrangements involving friendship. The ideologically-constrained intergroup contact hypothesis is tested using a fixed-effects regression analysis of the 2014-European Social Survey (Round 7), which includes 21 countries and 32,196 individuals. The concluding section discusses the broader implications of our findings.

The Gay Hussar: The Origins and Spread of Buserant in the Danube Region

ABSTRACTThis papers examines how the word Buserant ‘gay’ spread in the languages of the Danube region. Further, it hypothesises in what contact situations borrowing occurred. In this, it presents a case study illustrating lexical borrowing in the proposed Danubian Sprachbund. According to the study’s findings Italian road workers introduced Buserant in Viennese German from where it spread through army service and/or travellers in taverns of Austria Hungary. The borrowing appears to be restricted to the languages of Austria-Hungary and excludes Yiddish, which can be explained by the relative isolation of Yiddish-speaking communities by the mid-nineteenth century.

Match injury incidence during the Super Rugby tournament is high: a prospective cohort study over five seasons involving 93 641 player-hours

ObjectivesTo determine the incidence and nature of injuries in the Super Rugby tournament over a 5-year period.Methods482 male professional rugby union players from six South African teams participating in the...

Contact dynamics and control of a space robot capturing a tumbling object

Capture of a free-floating space object in orbit is a challenging task especially when the object is tumbling. In this paper, the contact dynamics modeling and control problem for capturing a fast tumbling target object by a space robot are investigated. A generic frictional contact model is developed to represent the contact forces between the robot's end-effector and the target object. The frictional contact formulation is based on the compliance contact force and bristle friction model which can simulate intermittent frictional contact situations involving multiple-point contacts between contact interfaces with complex geometries. A resolved motion admittance control method is designed to realize a good tracking for a tumbling target object while increasing the compliance of the space robot. A simulation example of a 7-joint manipulator capturing a tumbling object in three dimensions is presented. The simulation results revealed that various contact scenarios during the capture process can be well simulated with the developed contact model and a good performance of the designed control method for capturing a fast tumbling target object.

Evaluation of Conformal and Non-Conformal Contact Parameters Using Digital Photoelasticity

Experimental studies to exploit photoelastic data of conformal geometries to extract contact parameters are non-existent because closed-form stress field equations were not available until recently. In this paper, the explicit equations recently reported in the literature for a flat punch with rounded edges are generalized so that a single set of equations can be used for a flat punch with rounded edges and Hertzian contacts with arbitrary radii of curvatures. The generality of the governing equations is verified by plotting isochromatics for conformal and non-conformal contact situations. A generic method to evaluate unknown contact parameters from the whole-field isochromatic data for conformal and non-conformal geometries is implemented. The methodology is initially verified using theoretically generated isochromatic data and is then used to experimentally evaluate two contact situations. In view of high-fringe gradient zones, the suitability of various digital photoelastic methods is compared. A novel four-step phase shifting technique is proposed in which isochromatic and isoclinic data can be evaluated using the minimum number of images.

Explicit analytical solutions for two-dimensional contact detection problems between almost arbitrary geometries and straight or circular counterparts

Contact between complex bodies and simple counterparts like straight lines or circles occur in many two-dimensional mechanical models. The corresponding contact detection problems are complicated and thus far, no explicit formulas have been available. In this paper, we address the contact detection problem between two planar bodies: one being either a straight line or a circle and the other an almost arbitrary—geometry the only requirement is a unique contact point for all possible contact situations. To solve this general problem, a novel procedure is applied which provides necessary conditions for the description of the geometry based on the special case of a rolling contact. This results in a parameterization of the geometry which gives the potential contact point depending on the relative orientation between the two bodies. Although the derivation is based on a rolling contact, the result is valid in general and can also be used for efficient contact detection when the bodies are separated. The derived equations are simple and easy to implement, which is demonstrated for two examples: a foot-ground contact model and a cam-follower mechanism.

Adhesion Properties of Freestanding Hydrophobin Bilayers.

Hydrophobins are a family of small-sized proteins featuring a distinct hydrophobic patch on the protein's surface, rendering them amphiphilic. This particularity allows hydrophobins to self-assemble into monolayers at any hydrophilic/hydrophobic interface. Moreover, stable pure protein bilayers can be created from two interfacial hydrophobin monolayers by contacting either their hydrophobic or their hydrophilic sides. In this study, this is achieved via a microfluidic approach, in which also the bilayers' adhesion energy can be determined. This enables us to study the origin of the adhesion of hydrophobic and hydrophilic core bilayers made from the class II hydrophobins HFBI and HFBII. Using different fluid media in this setup and introducing genetically modified variants of the HFBI molecule, the different force contributions to the adhesion of the bilayer sheets are studied. It was found that in the hydrophilic contact situation, the adhesive interaction was higher than that in the hydrophobic contact situation and could be even enhanced by reducing the contributions of electrostatic interactions. This effect indicates that the van der Waals interaction is the dominant contribution that explains the stability of the observed bilayers.

COMPARAÇÃO DO EFEITO ELETROQUÍMICO DO BENZOTRIAZOL E DO NITRATO DE SÓDIO EM MEIO ÁCIDO NA CORROSÃO DO AÇO INOXIDÁVEL ABNT 304

Stainless steels have gained great utility because of their characteristics of excellent resistance to corrosion, among other characteristics. The most varied uses expose them to various situations of temperature, pressure and contact with various substances, causing corrosion even with good resistance. The objective of this work was to study the electrochemical action of benzotriazole and sodium nitrate in the corrosion of stainless steel ABNT 304 in hydrochloric acid. Measurements of open circuit potential, polarization curve and optical analysis were used at a temperature of 24 ± 1 ° C. The results of the optical analysis showed a corrosive effect on stainless steel ABNT 304 in the presence of HCl and sodium nitrate and less corrosion in the presence of benzotriazole. Open circuit potential measurements for benzotriazole showed little representative inhibitory protection and sodium nitrate functioned as a catalyst. The polarization curve confirms the previous results.

International tourism and (linguistic) accommodation: Convergence towards and through English in tourist information interactions

International tourism continues to grow and diversify exponentially, creating situations of intense language contact and giving rise to unexpected sociolinguistic dynamics and phenomena. In order to ensure successful communication and counteract the challenges linked to these dynamics, speakers in tourist contexts must be able to adapt in order to accommodate to their interlocutors. Based on ethnographic and interactional data taken from a fieldwork project, the aim of this article is to explore the manifestations of accommodation in face-to-face interactions between international tourists and tourism professionals in the Tourist Office of Marseille, France. Taking Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles, Coupland & Coupland 1991) as its main conceptual basis, this article shows how English is at the heart of two key processes of accommodation. Firstly, speakers converge towards English as a main language of interaction. Secondly, speakers accommodate to each other through one-off uses of English in side sequences and pragmatic reformulation strategies in order to repair or prevent communicative difficulties. Following this, the dynamics that underpin these accommodation processes are explored and the repercussions of accommodation are discussed, both in terms of interpersonal relationships and wider social dynamics. The analyses presented here show that converging towards and accommodating through English allow speakers to establish, protect and recover “common ground” (Stalnaker 2002), overcome communicative problems and co-construct understanding. Finally, language ideology is shown to be a key factor in the dynamics underlying processes of accommodation in this particular context.

Transient wear simulation based on three-dimensional finite element analysis for a dry running tilted shaft-bushing bearing

This paper presents a method to predict dry sliding wear. It is developed for the wear simulation on a tilted shaft-bushing bearing of an automotive turbocharger wastegate system. Therefore the simulation of complex dynamic behavior with its respective contact situations is required and is performed by nonlinear, transient, three-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA). Simultaneous wear calculation on all contact surfaces is possible considering individual wear coefficients. In order to reduce computing time, the resulting ablation depth is extrapolated. Subsequently the mesh is adjusted by implementing nodal displacements. The progress of the calculated wear volume matches well with theoretical considerations for different mesh qualities. Mesh refinement only leads to a higher resolution of the results but good convergence is achieved.

Implementation of Soil Pressure Sensors in Large-Scale Soil-Structure Interaction Studies

Accurate measurement of the static and dynamic earth pressures acting on structures is critical to understanding the behavior of and the interaction between structures and soil. Different types of devices are commercially available to measure the soil-structure contact stress, and the advantages and limitations of some commonly used devices are summarized. A new, easily constructible, simple, and robust sensor assembly for measuring pressures at the soil-structure interface is introduced and discussed. The sensors are suitable for a variety of potential soil-structure contact situations, including static and dynamic load cases and linear and nonlinear soil behavior. One static and two dynamic experimental case studies serve as examples to describe the construction, installation, and deployment of the new sensors. The static and dynamic calibration procedure of pressure sensors with capacities of 144 kPa and 288 kPa are described. Recommendations for investigators to build and implement the sensor for individualized research applications are provided.