Achebe’s defense of civilized Ibo culture via proverbial language in Things Fall Apart

This paper is an attempt to explore the proverbial language of Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart in support of the civilized Ibo culture. Chinua Achebe has put many proverbs in his mouth pieces. All the proverbs used in this novel belong to the Ibo culture. The proverbs used by Ibo people in the novel are worthy enough to claim that they have a strong heritage and history which is symbol of civilized culture. The language of the Ibo people when compared with whites, it becomes crystal clear that whatever they say is proved or followed by strong arguments of proverbs. Whites say things imperatively and lack strong arguments in their talks. The questioning of Ibo people during their discussions with whites is as rich as their day to day conversations. Language is one of the basic traits of a culture, the culture having language saturated with proverbs and rich vocabulary is considered to be civilized culture. Ibo language is rich in both these aspects therefore it is presented as a civilized and strong culture not mere the culture of barbarians as considered by the West. This is a text-oriented study which is focused on the language of Things Fall Apart in which proverbs are used in abundance and the purpose of this paper is to prove that Chinua Achebe wants to reveal the civilized side of Africans in general and Ibo people in particular

“Creatures of Mimic and Imitation”: The Liberty Tree, Black Elections, and the Politicization of African Ceremonial Space in Revolutionary Newport, Rhode Island

The article explains how African slaves changed the colonial space of 18th century Newport, Rhode Island by transporting and preserving cultural and political concepts and codes. African slaves who came directly to Newport frequently came from the Gold Coast and consisted of Mandingo, Mende, Ibo, Ashanti and Fante peoples. Although the city\u27s black population came from various regions and groups, its Africans could draw on a common cultural vocabulary that gave trees a sacred, and even cosmic, importance

An Animal Model of Alzheimer\u27s Disease: Behavioral and Histological Assessment Following Bilateral Intrahippocampal Injections of B-Amyloid (25-35)

Pathologically, Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) is characterized by deposits of neuritic plaques (NP) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) typically found in the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and basal forebrain. Increasing evidence suggests that the major constituent of NP, a B-amyloid protein(BAP) composed of 39-42 amino acids, possesses neurotoxic properties. It has been reputed that the neurotoxic properties of BAP(1-40) may be dependent on the aggregational state of the peptide. Recent studies have demonstrated in vitro that a fragment of the B-amyloid protein, BAP(25-35), disrupts intracellular calcium homeostasis, decreases neuronal survival, and potentiates the toxicity of excitatory amino acids (EAA). While some evidence supports the direct in vivo toxicity of BAP, the extent of neuronal damage has not been compared with standard lesions made by EAAs. Moreover, currently the effects of intracerebral injections of BAP(2535) on learning and memory in the rat is unknown. Therefore, in this study a comparative behavioral and histological assessment was conducted following bilateral intrahippocampal injections of BAP(25-35), ibotenic acid (IBO), BAP(25-35)+IBO, and incubated BAP(25-35) (1 week at 37 C). A radial arm maze and Morris water maze were utilized for comparative learning and memory assessment. Preliminary results indicate that there is a clear disruption of learning performance in animals co-injected with low doses of BAP(25-35) (4nmol/ul) + IBO (lug/ul) while identical doses injected separately had no effect. The deficits in learning observed following injections of BAP(25-35)+IBO and the high does of IBO was not, however, due to disruptions in motor behavior as there was no difference found between groups on a treadmill test in those that ran the maze and those that did not. In support of the behavioral results, preliminary histological analyses revealed cytotoxic effects in the hippocampus following injections of BAP(25-35) \u27+ IBO or a high does of IBO. This study suggests that the injection of BAP (25-35) into the hippocampus promotes the vulnerability of neurons to excitotoxic damage in vivo and disrupts learning/memory in rats

Spectral Efficiency and Energy Efficiency of OFDM Systems: Impact of Power Amplifiers and Countermeasures

In wireless communication systems, the nonlinear effect and inefficiency of power amplifier (PA) have posed practical challenges for system designs to achieve high spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). In this paper, we analyze the impact of PA on the SE-EE tradeoff of orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) systems. An ideal PA that is always linear and incurs no additional power consumption can be shown to yield a decreasing convex function in the SE-EE tradeoff. In contrast, we show that a practical PA has an SE-EE tradeoff that has a turning point and decreases sharply after its maximum EE point. In other words, the Pareto-optimal tradeoff boundary of the SE-EE curve is very narrow. A wide range of SE-EE tradeoff, however, is desired for future wireless communications that have dynamic demand depending on the traffic loads, channel conditions, and system applications, e.g., high-SE-with-low-EE for rate-limited systems and high-EE-with-low-SE for energy-limited systems. For the SE-EE tradeoff improvement, we propose a PA switching (PAS) technique. In a PAS transmitter, one or more PAs are switched on intermittently to maximize the EE and deliver an overall required SE. As a consequence, a high EE over a wide range SE can be achieved, which is verified by numerical evaluations: with 15% SE reduction for low SE demand, the PAS between a low power PA and a high power PA can improve EE by 323%, while a single high power PA transmitter improves EE by only 68%.Comment: to be published, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commu