Distinct Symbols Research Articles

The Politics of Gender and Gender relations with Reference to Sudanese Girls Songs

Sudanese women’s experience in oral tradition remains unrecognised in its own cultural setting. Agani al-Banat (literally means the girls’ songs) is not regarded as a serious artistry either because in most cases the author is unknown, or sung by those who are considered disrespectable according to the riverine culture i.e. the culture of the northern Sudanese who live along the river Nile. The Girls songs are worth of studying and investigating due to the terminology, expression and symbols used in these songs, the rites associated with their performance, the continuity and dynamism of the songs themselves make the girls songs a pure women's culture with its distinctive features and symbols that influence or be influenced with social reality. Through applying Griswold’s cultural diamond framework this paper examines selected songs’ texts, which carry various symbolism and meanings which, identify gender relations, gender identity, women's aspiration/feelings, and rebellion to the dominant culture. The journey within the girls’ songs texts has uncovered both positive (empowerment) and negative (disempowerment) impacts of these songs on Sudanese women’s expereince. In term of empowerment the Sudanese women, through the Girls’ Songs, break the silence towards some practices such as compulsory relatives’ marriage and polygamy. While in terms of disempowerment, these songs, supports the dominant culture through participating in presenting and perpetuating the stereotype images of woman’s identity as being only defined by her body.

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

The role of Tamga systems in the study of the ethnic history of nomadic tribes

  Any nation throughout history has its own distinctive symbols in beliefs, culture, customs, and tradi- tions that have been with them since ancient times. For some, it is represented by a battle cry, for others by a tamga, for a third by a special worldview, beliefs, as well as ideas and beliefs associated with color. And the study of each of them separately through a part of the history of the people, its ethnic history, territorial location, features of settlement and relations with neighboring people, interactions, etc. make it possible to obtain additional information on these problems. Any tamga consists of signs caused by the perception of information in the history of mankind, in its nature. Such tamgas, in turn, are found on the territory of Kazakhstan. A distinctive feature of the tribe is that such tamgas initially performed the duties of defenders of the tribes, and then became their separate tamgas. In addition, tribal tamgas can provide quite important information about their ethnic structure and composition when studying the history of Turkic tribes and ethnic groups that have preserved a tribal and nomadic way of life. In the article, tamgas and signs were used as source material for the study of ethnic, political and other problems. Key words: tamga, symbol, Turkic peoples, ethnonym, Central Asia.

A case study on a flexible floor plan design for South Korean apartments using two types of margins

PurposeThe purposes of this study are to prove that the content of floor flexibility can be designed objectively with the use of margins, which are an architectural vocabulary visualizing the possibility of formal change, and to conduct a case study on how the existing typical floor plans of South Korean apartments change with the extension of flexibility: the usability of margins and the results.Design/methodology/approachThis study reviews two housing projects with different methods of flexible housing design: one is the flexibility to change the sizes of spaces and the other is the flexibility to change the topology of spaces. In this paper, the architectural term “area margin” is used for the former and “linear margin” for the latter. These were applied to the case of current apartments in South Korea to transform them into floor plans with the two types of flexibility and investigated whether the proposed floor plans satisfy the required efficacy structurally and functionally.Findings This case study shows that margins can be used as architectural vocabularies representing flexible sizes of rooms and flexible boundaries with neighbors. The final form of the structural framework became homogeneous, even though it conserved its indigenous spatial characteristics of abundant natural sunlight and airflow. In addition, the transformed structural framework has higher rigidity than the original one, even though the transversal wall was cut off with a margin, as shown by the schematic representations in this paper. Research limitations/implicationsThe alternative plan, designed as a modification process, is not representative as a flexible floor plan. Rather, it is thought more important to make a range of variations rather than prototyping a model. This study starts from the premise that it is desirable for apartment house plans to share and encourage variations rather than aiming at typical sizes and shapes. Furthermore, this study exemplified the process to modify the existing typical floor plan into a flexible one using margins. Through this modification, it is thought that the typology of the South Korean apartment, which has succeeded in gaining social consensus for half a century, can be preserved while accommodating social changes in the future.Social implicationsThe control of future variations of floor plans will extend the socioeconomic and physical life of a building, enabling a reasonable reinvestment of resources.Originality/valueThis paper deals with a design method applying distinct visual symbols to different contexts of flexibility and using those as architectural vocabularies.

Celebration of the Hyperreal Nostalgia: Categorization and Analysis of Visual Vaporwave Artefacts

Summary Vaporwave grabs the attention of internet voyager with harsh collages glued together in a technically primitive manner. It’s a cultural phenomenon which both originated and is active solely on the internet. In the context of general internet culture Vaporwave is exclusive in its aesthetics due to the domination of violet and pink colors, technically primitive quality of texts, fetishization of 8th and 9th decade mainstream commodities and acute nostalgic undertones. Vaporwave has been mostly explored as a music genre or sociological phenomenon, while its visual aspect has mostly remained unattended. This article seeks to analyze the conceptual aspects embodied within Vaporwave visuals, to briefly compare them with music, and to unpack the mechanism of nostalgia as an affective entry point to the movement. The interpretation is mainly lead by Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, and interpretational principles of hermeneutics. Five Tumblr blogs were analyzed. Hermeneutic inquiry into the texts yielded seven distinct symbol categories differentiated by the affect they generate: nostalgic commodities, idyllic classics, melancholic landscapes, harsh distortions, gentle geometry, depressive texts, and ecstatic brands. Each of these categories here are elaborated in detail finally summarizing the multilayered symbolism of the movement. It can be described as nostalgically challenging visual conventions through harsh technical quality and opposing codes of behavior through open expressions of depression and melancholy, thus exposing the doubts of individual imprisoned in postmodern society. ’80s and ’90s here become hyperreal fantasy lands of the past where a nostalgic individual can find refuge. In comparison to music, the visual aspect of Vaporwave highlights the technology as central artefacts of nostalgia, introduces new ways to analyze late capitalist consumer culture, and brings an intimate dialogue with hyperreality to the front. The article suggests that Vaporwave is a post-ironic art movement which both celebrates and criticizes capitalism, finally remaining vague whether there are ways to escape the system, and whether these ways should even be looked for.

Investigating the Role of International Phonetic Alphabet to Enhance Highschool Students’ Pronunciation Skill

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) has been used to provide a unique symbol for each distinctive sound in a language. The IPA has been widely utilized by linguists and dictionaries with modifications for easier identification. This study focuses on how IPA supports Indonesian EFL learners with their pronunciation practice particularly in senior high school context. The present study is qualitative literary research. First, the researcher collected the data from the questionnaire, second, the researcher identified them and make it into conclusion. The result of the analysis showed that students gave their positive perspective in using the IPA symbols as they believed it could enhance their oral skills and technique for learning pronunciation. Although IPA symbols were regarded as useful and easier to learn, several students thought positively of using the phonetic symbol in their learning, most of them felt it is difficult, since the phonetic symbols each had distinctive symbols resulting in students confused to remember and comprehend. This study implies that while the learning curve is high, students were quite motivated to learn English pronunciation through IPA.

Memory and identity in Ludwig Bauer’s novels (Karusel and Toranj kiselih jabuka)

In the works of Ludwig Bauer, a significant place is given to the autobiographical memory of the past, strongly connected with the discourse of identity, lost childhood, collective amnesia; it is related to body memory, place memory, and in the characters’ biographies there is usually present (overt or covert) Plato’s eikon (seen as a trace imprinted on the psyche and the mind), whose finding and explaining stimulates the plot and the story. Community memory is stored (A. Assmann) in the individual memory of its members. The aim of the proposed topic is to explore — with the use of interdisciplinary, methodological achievements in the field of memory discourse — the hermeneut-ics of L. Bauer’s selected works. As a result, the disquisition provides an analysis of literature in the process of forming memory and identity in the area of the former Yugoslavia, as well as literature as a medium of memory and “distinctive symbol system” (B. Neumann) in the whole culture of memory.

Card-Based Cryptography Meets Formal Verification

Card-based cryptography provides simple and practicable protocols for performing secure multi-party computation with just a deck of cards. For the sake of simplicity, this is often done using cards with only two symbols, e.g., clubsuit and heartsuit . Within this paper, we also target the setting where all cards carry distinct symbols, catering for use-cases with commonly available standard decks and a weaker indistinguishability assumption. As of yet, the literature provides for only three protocols and no proofs for non-trivial lower bounds on the number of cards. As such complex proofs (handling very large combinatorial state spaces) tend to be involved and error-prone, we propose using formal verification for finding protocols and proving lower bounds. In this paper, we employ the technique of software bounded model checking (SBMC), which reduces the problem to a bounded state space, which is automatically searched exhaustively using a SAT solver as a backend. Our contribution is threefold: (a) we identify two protocols for converting between different bit encodings with overlapping bases, and then show them to be card-minimal. This completes the picture of tight lower bounds on the number of cards with respect to runtime behavior and shuffle properties of conversion protocols. For computing AND, we show that there is no protocol with finite runtime using four cards with distinguishable symbols and fixed output encoding, and give a four-card protocol with an expected finite runtime using only random cuts. (b) We provide a general translation of proofs for lower bounds to a bounded model checking framework for automatically finding card- and run-minimal (i.e., the protocol has a run of minimal length) protocols and to give additional confidence in lower bounds. We apply this to validate our method and, as an example, confirm our new AND protocol to have its shortest run for protocols using this number of cards. (c) We extend our method to also handle the case of decks on symbols clubsuit and heartsuit , where we show run-minimality for two AND protocols from the literature.

Urbanization and Imperial Integration at Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico

ABSTRACT This article discusses the urban landscape of Angamuco, located in the Purépecha (Tarascan) imperial heartland in western Mexico. Angamuco was occupied between the Late Preclassic through Late Postclassic periods (250–1530 a.d.) and included an occupation with monumental architecture and artifacts that can be linked to the Purépecha Empire. This paper provides an occupation model for Angamuco using radiocarbon determinations and artifact associations. Excavation and survey data show: 1) urbanization at Angamuco should be viewed as a diachronic process that must be contextualized with contemporaneous sociopolitical and environmental changes and 2) imperial integration at Angamuco is most visible in the incorporation of imperial material packages, including distinctive architecture and symbols, that were used in public ritual activities.

The Symbol of Cosmetic Products as Social Distinction and the False Needs of Shopping for Cosmetics at Department Stores Aroused by Women’s Magazines

Cosmetic industry is a dynamic sector, which changes fast with the emergence of new products that are advertised glamorously, and they take place on colorful pages in women’s magazines, which imply to the average female consumer that they can always create a new self by purchasing these cosmetic products. In other words, in the consumer culture, the products that they purchase define consumers, and consumption is seen as an everyday activity, which is done quite frequently (Paterson, 2006). The cosmetic products that women decide to buy carry symbolic meanings, and these meanings are transferred when they consume these products (Iqani, 2012). The consumer culture promises to the female consumer that by buying a variety of goods she can achieve self-enhancement, which will help her to stand out among other people, and she can preserve her self-esteem this way as she will be superior to others (Mooij, 2004). Therefore, this paper aims to make a critique of the consumer culture from the perspective of cosmetic products by showing how women, in fact, use cosmetics as a symbol of distinction and do hedonic shopping at department stores, and how women’s magazines indeed create false needs in their readers for purchasing more cosmetic products by putting a literature review forward.

The bicycle as a symbol of lifestyle, status and distinction. A cultural studies analysis of urban cycling (sub)cultures in Berlin

ABSTRACT The bicycle has been gaining attention in planning, politics, academia and across the media and has become increasingly present in urban landscapes and popular cultures: young urbanites ride minimalistic, stylish and individualised bicycles and wear messenger bags for their commute to work or to university. Additionally, bicycles can be seen in lifestyle blogs, advertising, shop windows or living rooms as decoration and eye-catchers. Taking this observation as a starting point, I focus my research on how bicycles, especially fixed-gear bikes and recent cycling trends are being used to express lifestyle, status, and social distinction in an urban middleclass context. In order to investigate further, I conducted a cultural studies analysis based on participant observations and media analysis exploring cultural meanings and practices in urban cycling cultures in Berlin, Germany. My research leads me to the result that the bicycle is increasingly turning into a key object of popular urban culture, combining tendencies of commercialisation, specialisation and standardisation, with a strong focus on aesthetics, design, lifestyle and consumerism. In the context of urban cultures, the bicycle is therefore experiencing a symbolic revaluation, making it desirable to more and more urbanites, but also more exclusive.

Exclusion

Exclusion

Social Media as Tools of Exclusion in Academia?

Social Media as Tools of Exclusion in Academia?

‘Grandpa’ or ‘opera’? Production and perception of unstressed /a/ and /əʁ/ in German

In the description of German phonology, two distinct phonetic symbols are currently recommended for the transcription of the vowels [a] (a central low vowel, phonemically /a/) and [ɐ] (phonemically /əʁ/) in word-final, unstressed positions. The present study examines whether differences between these two vowels exist in production and perception of Standard German speakers from the north of Germany. In Experiment 1, six speakers produced a series of minimal pairs that were embedded in meaningful sentences and varied with respect to their accentuation and position within a prosodic phrase. In Experiment 2, the minimal pairs produced by the six speakers of the first experiment were extracted from their respective contexts and tested with 44 native German listeners in a forced-choice identification task. Perceptual results showed a better-than-chance performance for one male speaker of the corpus only. Phonetic analyses also confirmed that only this male speaker produced subtle, but consistent F2/F3 differences between [a] and [ɐ] while the contrast was completely neutralised in the rest of the corpus. We discuss the role of prosody in vowel neutralisation with a specific focus on unstressed vowels and make suggestions for phonetic and phonological accounts of Standard German.

Halal Destination Images of Japan: A Visual Content Analysis

The scope of the paper is to investigate the construction of visual communication in shaping a Halal destination image in Japan. Even though Japan is located by a significant distance from Islamic countries, halal tourism prominence has become a rapidly growing interest in the country. In fact, in 2016, Japan won the “World’s Best Non-OIC Emerging Halal Destination”, and in 2019, the country was ranked in the top three in the category of non-OIC Muslim-friendly destination for Muslim travellers. The paper attempts to describe the exploration of the images found in Japan’s tourism promotional brochures. The study aimed at interpreting the denotative and connotative messages of the promotional images in the sampled brochures. A visual content analysis was applied to interpret the brochures’ layout and promotional images. The findings of the study imply that distinctive Islamic symbols and Japanese monumental structure are the prominent denotative elements of the brochure. Regarding the connotative elements, the analysis indicates that female Muslim and Halal food become the main Synecdoche in representing Japan’s Halal destination image. It is hoped that the study could give new insights for visual communication and tourism practitioners concerning how images can be constructed to represent the audiences’ interests and experiences. Keywords: Destination image, halal tourism, Japan, representation, visual analysis.

K-Plex 2-Erasure Codes and Blackburn Partial Latin Squares

A k-plex of order n is an n × n matrix on n symbols, where every row contains k distinct symbols, every column contains k distinct symbols, and every symbol occurs exactly k times. Yi et al. (2019) introduced 3-plex codes which are 2-erasure codes (2-erasure tolerant array codes) derived from 3-plexes. In this paper, we generalize 3-plex codes to k-plex codes. We introduce the notion of a “strong” k-plex which implies the derived k-plex code is 2-erasure tolerant. Moreover, k-plex codes derived from strong k-plexes have a straightforward algorithm for reconstruction. These general k-plex codes offer greater flexibility when choosing a suitable code for a storage system, enabling the operator to better optimize the unavoidable trade-offs involved. Blackburn asked for the maximum number of entries in an n × n partial Latin square on n symbols in which if distinct cells (i, j) and (i', j') contain the same symbol, then the cells (i', j) and (i, j') are empty. A “strong” k-plex satisfies the Blackburn property (along with two other properties related to erasure coding). We investigate the necessary conditions for the existence of Blackburn k-plexes (and hence necessary conditions for the existence of strong k-plexes). We show that any Blackburn k-plex has order n ≥ [(√2 + 1)k - 2]. We describe how to construct strong k-plexes of order n when k ∈ {2, 3, 4, 5} for all possible orders n, and we give a simple construction of strong k-plexes of order k <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> for k ≥ 2.

"Healthier Than Just Healthy": Families Transmitting Health as Cultural Capital.

As the relationship between social class and health strengthens and socioeconomic and health inequalities widen, understanding how parents' socioeconomic advantage translates into health and class advantages in the next generation is increasingly important. Our analyses illustrate how a classed performance of "health" is a fundamental component of transmitting cultural capital in families and communities. Socially advantaged parents' health and class goals for children are often met simultaneously by building children's cultural capital in community-specific ways. This study uses observational, interview, and focus group data from families in two middle-class communities to illustrate how health-focused cultural capital acquisition plays out in everyday life. As parents manage children's lives to ensure future advantages, they often focus on health-related behaviors and performances as symbols of class-based distinction for their children. The synergy between family and community cultural capital is strengthening class and health advantages for some children, even as health-focused cultural capital often has drawbacks for stress and well-being. The intensification of and value placed on "health" in cultural capital may have long-term implications for health, socioeconomic attainment, and inequalities. If health-focused cultural capital continues to become increasingly salient for status attainment, its importance could grow, widening these gaps and reducing intergenerational mobility.

Conceptualizing Festival Attractiveness and Its Impact on Festival Hosting Destination Loyalty: A Mixed Method Approach

A number of studies have been conducted to examine the attractiveness of tourism destinations. However, there has been little research done on festival attractiveness nor on its impact on destination loyalty. This study employed a mixed method approach to investigate the festivals in Guangzhou city, China. Firstly, through a qualitative method, the four dimensions of festival attractiveness were identified, i.e., strong festival atmosphere, harmonious interpersonal interaction, distinct cultural symbols and rich festival activities. Then, based on a cognitive–affective–conative model, a quantitative method was used to explore the mechanism through which festival attractiveness impacts sense of place and destination loyalty. Structural equation modeling showed that all dimensions of festival attractiveness have positive effects on place attachment, but not all of them have positive effects on place identity. Findings further indicate that place attachment has a positive effect on place identity, and that place attachment and place identity both have positive effects on destination loyalty. These results indicate that festival hosting destination loyalty follows the processes of both festival attractiveness cognition and destination affection evaluation.

Beyond circles and squares: A commentary on updating pedigree nomenclature to better represent patient diversity.

With changes in our understanding of gender identity and disorders of sex differentiation (DSDs), as well as a need to promote medical care that appropriately reflects the intersectional personal identities of patients with respect to sex and gender, we explored possible modifications of pedigree nomenclature to better represent such patient diversity. There are currently no widely accepted standard symbols to simultaneously represent both gender identity and assigned sex at birth within a pedigree. Previous studies assessing perspectives from members of the transgender and gender non-binary (TGNB) community have highlighted the need for a unique symbol to represent non-binary individuals and better ways to represent core gender identities for gender minorities such as transgender individuals. In our experience we have encountered similar dilemmas with documentation for individuals with DSDs in terms of a lack of unequivocal symbolic representation within the pedigree. Here we propose three distinct symbols for gender identity combined with superscript symbols to represent sex assigned at birth, which we think may unequivocally represent TGNB individuals and patients with DSDs. It is clear that further research is needed to ensure that any proposed changes are acceptable by and respectful of all patients regardless of their gender identity and assigned sex at birth. We hope that further research will include focus groups and surveys to get broader input from gender minority stakeholders so that new standards can be developed and modified as we strive to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse patient population.

Development of an Automated Camera-Based Drone Landing System

Digital image processing serves as a multifunctional tool for measurement and positioning tasks in robotics. The present paper deals with the development of a camera-based positioning system for quadrocopters in order to automate their landing process. In this regard, a quadrocopter equipped with classical radio-control components is upgraded with applicable hardware, such as a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a wide-angle camera. Hereupon, black-box system identifications are executed to attain the relevant plants of the attitude control performed by the flight controller. Thereby, a PID-controller for the altitude control including a back-calculation anti-windup as well as two PD-controllers for the horizontal plane are designed using a pole placement method. Effective tests of the controller gains are conducted by simulating the closed loops respectively. Since the camera functions as a position sensor, an image processing algorithm is then implemented to detect a distinctive landing symbol in real time while converting its image position into compliant feedback errors (pixel-to-physical distance-conversion). Ultimately, the developed system allows for the robust detection and successful landing on the landing spot by a position control operating at 20 hertz.