Josef Fares’ Zozo as accented cinema

In 2005, the Lebanese-Swedish filmmaker Josef Fares, who had attained recognition in Sweden through the immigrant comedies Jalla! Jalla! (2000) and Kopps (2003), presented his third feature film and first drama, Zozo, inspired by Fares’s own migration to Sweden. Set in 1987 Beirut, Zozo portrays a ten-year boy who loses his parents during the Lebanese Civil War and who journeys to reunite with his grandparents already settled in Sweden. In Sweden, Zozo is forced to learn the host country’s language quickly and to understand the unwritten rules of his new culture. Like his grandparents, he will probably always have an accent and be recognizably the “other.” The film became Sweden’s national submission to the 78th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and its nomination not only raised questions on what Sweden and Swedishness mean in a contemporary global world, but it also reexamined the problems of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory in a borderless Europe. In this essay I argue that Zozo is an illustration of accented film, which means the film is neither Swedish nor Lebanese, but a combination of both. Influenced by his deterritorialization from Lebanon and his current life in Sweden, the cinematographic stylistic choices of Josef Fares exhibit a “double consciousness” - multiple cultural identities at once. To further understand the Lebanese and Swedish elements in the film, I analyze how elements such as chronotopes (time-space), border crossing, epistolarity, and double consciousness are inscribed in the film. In addition, I use Laura U. Marks’ concept of fossils, radioactive recollection-objects. By employing Hamid Naficy’s accented cinema theory, I hope to explain how Josef Fares is neither Swedish nor Lebanese, but an individual with multicultural identities, which reflect in the elements of the narrative and cinematographic style.Germanic Studie

Discourse structure analysis for requirement mining

International audienceIn this work, we first introduce two main approaches to writing requirements and then propose a method based on Natural Language Processing to improve requirement authoring and the overall coherence, cohesion and organization of requirement documents. We investigate the structure of requirement kernels, and then the discourse structure associated with those kernels. This will then enable the system to accurately extract requirements and their related contexts from texts (called requirement mining). Finally, we relate a first experimentation on requirement mining based on texts from seven companies. An evaluation that compares those results with manually annotated corpora of documents is given to conclude

Algorithmic Verification of Continuous and Hybrid Systems

We provide a tutorial introduction to reachability computation, a class of computational techniques that exports verification technology toward continuous and hybrid systems. For open under-determined systems, this technique can sometimes replace an infinite number of simulations.Comment: In Proceedings INFINITY 2013, arXiv:1402.661

Exploring the 'hidden' in organisations: methodological challenges in construction management research

There has been recognition of the limitations of technocratic approaches to construction management research, and critical theorists in the field have often rejected prescriptive explanations of social phenomena. Thus, there has been a rise in the use of interpretive methodological approaches and a proliferation of qualitative research methods in the construction management literature. Still, interpretive research that requires interaction between the researcher and her informants often confronts the age-old, fundamental challenge that is posed to social science research: that is, what really does go on in organisations, beyond what is (and can be) said and seen? Through post-hoc reflection of a recent study into innovation in construction, it was found that multiple perspectives matter in shaping our understanding of how innovative practices manifests in construction. An observation was also made regarding the hidden agendas of senior management participants in recognising, rewarding and promoting innovation, which potentially contribute to disconnections between theory and practice of innovation in construction. Questions are raised as to how researchers can help articulate these ‘hidden’ agendas and methodological challenges discussed here points to the virtues and limitations of the ethnographic approach

Attitudes on Medical Ethics of Criminal Neurointerventional Treatment

As contemporary scientific advancements offer the opportunity to manipulate processes of the human body at a higher degree of invasiveness than ever before, a number of bioethical concerns are raised. One significant concern is how to discern the acceptable integration of advancements in neurologically-based interventions into the criminal justice system. Past literature supports the idea that there are several variables that interact to form a global conversation on the ethics of compromising a criminal’s freedom of mind for the purposes of sentencing or rehabilitation. Attitudes toward the current criminal justice system and the current uses of neurointerventions are significantly influential, and the public attitudes of such topics have been well-recorded through the literature. An experienced physician was interviewed in order to gain the perspective of a professional who regularly implements neurologically-based treatments. The results of the interview suggested that professionals have a moderate level of confidence that the current relationship between the criminal justice system and neurointerventional methods has generally remained within ethical boundaries. The results also suggested that medical practitioners are tasked with balancing the dignity and the safety patients, which can cause frequent ethical dilemmas. The varying responsibilities of medical professionals keep them equipped to implement expert-level care while simultaneously considering the ethical ramifications of their decisions

The Role of Language in the Media in Influencing Public Perceptions of Refugees

The refugee crisis has become a worldwide epidemic in recent years. As refugee entrance into host countries is debated, media outlets are covering the issue regularly. These media outlets use various types of language when portraying refugees. Many publications have been found to convey hostile and divisive themes as well as use specific linguistic tools, which contribute to negative portrayals of refugees. Media outlets have the potential to influence public perceptions of refugees because the general public in a host country receives its information primarily from the media. Overt and subtle language used to describe refugees has been previously found to influence public opinions. This study of 101 students at a conservative Christian university in the mid-Atlantic United States was designed to examine whether manipulated language in news articles impacted perceptions of refugees. Participants were randomly assigned to the positive or negative language condition and then asked to complete a survey assessing four facets of perception. None of the results were significant, indicating the language in the article did not impact perceptions of refugees. This study was limited by lack of diversity in the sample, the use of self-report data, potential personal confounds, and a small sample size. The results implied a need for balance when calling for media ethics and a need for many more empirical studies in this area

From the Instrument of Delivery to the Actual Agent of Harm: Fighting the Criminal Purchase of Ammunition

The illegal trade in ammunition in the Netherlands seems to be a small-scale problem. However, as a result of high profits and a small chance of being caught, it is an extremely attractive criminal activity for malicious individuals. The criminal purchase of ammunition is facilitated by weaknesses in the logistic supply chain for legal ammunition, current legislation on the purchase, possession, transport and use of ammunition and the inadequacy with which Dutch government agencies enforce the laws. The fight against the criminal purchase of ammunition could benefit from the adoption of an automated registration system by arms dealers, the use of a different type of freighting method for legal ammunition transport and a common approach by European law enforcement agencies.\u

The Question of Competence: Reconsidering Medical Education in the Twenty-First Century

[Excerpt] The real challenge for those involved in designing competency-based educational programs is to recognize the complexity of competence as a concept. Only then can they effectively delineate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that learners must acquire to be able to perform within each domain at a predetermined level and to recognize that the expected level of performance within each domain will vary depending on the learner\u27s stage of education and the specialty he or she is learning. The authors of this book help us do just that. They examine the challenges facing medical education and introduce the concept of discourse as a mechanism both for examining the idea of competence and considering how to implement competency-based education. In so doing, they provide us with a new way to ask the questions that are at the heart of every report advocating change, every criticism of medical education, and every conversation that questions why health care is the way it is today