Turbo Packet Combining Strategies for the MIMO-ISI ARQ Channel

This paper addresses the issue of efficient turbo packet combining techniques for coded transmission with a Chase-type automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol operating over a multiple-input--multiple-output (MIMO) channel with intersymbol interference (ISI). First of all, we investigate the outage probability and the outage-based power loss of the MIMO-ISI ARQ channel when optimal maximum a posteriori (MAP) turbo packet combining is used at the receiver. We show that the ARQ delay (i.e., the maximum number of ARQ rounds) does not completely translate into a diversity gain. We then introduce two efficient turbo packet combining algorithms that are inspired by minimum mean square error (MMSE)-based turbo equalization techniques. Both schemes can be viewed as low-complexity versions of the optimal MAP turbo combiner. The first scheme is called signal-level turbo combining and performs packet combining and multiple transmission ISI cancellation jointly at the signal-level. The second scheme, called symbol-level turbo combining, allows ARQ rounds to be separately turbo equalized, while combining is performed at the filter output. We conduct a complexity analysis where we demonstrate that both algorithms have almost the same computational cost as the conventional log-likelihood ratio (LLR)-level combiner. Simulation results show that both proposed techniques outperform LLR-level combining, while for some representative MIMO configurations, signal-level combining has better ISI cancellation capability and achievable diversity order than that of symbol-level combining.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, and 2 table

Enhancing Intercultural Competence: Can it be done without Studying Abroad?

Participation in intensive, immersive, service-learning study abroad programs with intentional intercultural activities embedded in the course curriculum has been shown to enhance cultural competence as measured via the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI®) (Krishnan, Masters, Holgate, Wang & Calahan, 2017; Krishnan, Lin & Benson, 2020). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative impact of embedding intercultural learning activities on students’ intercultural competence when included in an on-campus course compared to a study abroad program. The intervention group consisted of 34 students enrolled in the on-campus course which incorporated intentional intercultural activities. Forty-one students who did not take the course comprised the control group. Comparison of the pre- and post-IDI® scores showed a significant increase in intercultural competence in the intervention group and no change in score in the control group participants. Qualitative data supported these findings. The increase in group mean score is slightly lower than group mean score increases in study-abroad students. Results indicate that incorporating intentional intercultural learning activities in an on-campus course can be an effective mechanism for students to enhance intercultural competence without travelling abroad

Land Mobile Radio Systems - A Tutorial Exposition

An in-depth tutorial on land mobile radio system

Investigating public disengagement from planning for major infrastructure projects: A high voltage powerline case study

Public disengagement from consultation is a real-world problem affecting areas of the public sphere, such as land use planning, where democracy is a key requirement. The ethos of engaging the public in decision-making has long been accepted as an important objective in the UK planning system in order to protect and serve the public interest. However, there is limited research into why the public frequently appear to disengage from the consultation process for major engineering projects such as energy infrastructure. Public disengagement can result in a lack of representation and legitimate speech in the discourse of decision-making and my research challenges the effectiveness of the current system. Drawing on human geography, planning theory, sociology and my professional experience of working as an Environmental Planner on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, the research moves away from the current perceptions of an instrumental approach to public consultation for infrastructure. A novel approach to conceptualising disengagement is proposed through a Bourdieusian lens, which could enable a deeper understanding of the reasons for both voluntary and involuntary disengagement. By introducing a place dimension to the conceptual framework, the research is better able to understand the cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions that reflect the ways in which communities of place choose to engage with, or disengage from, the public consultation process for infrastructure. The research contributes conceptually, methodologically and empirically to addressing the research problem through a high voltage overhead powerline case study research design in Cumbria. Primary data has been collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and event ethnography. Secondary data, including local media, project documents, planning policy and best practice guidance, was also collected for contextual purposes. Qualitative methods allowed greater flexibility without a dependence on language, literacy or assumptions based on cultural norms and thematic analysis was selected as the method of analysis due to its accessibility and theoretically flexible approach to analysis which could be used with a case study research design. The credibility of the analysis was established through data collection triangulation using the secondary data to verify the emerging themes. The primary contribution to knowledge from this research has been to expand the understanding of disengagement, using the novel conceptual approach that combines the Bourdieusian conceptual framework with aspects of place, and which also has policy and practice implications. Factors affecting engagement in the case study include an underlying thread of symbolic violence and perceptions of stigma which have been shown to be partly place-based and partly resulting from community experiences of legacy planning applications for energy. There are also underlying factors of marginalisation and peripherality, with small communities frequently perceived to be without power or voice in the process. An examination of the relationship between habitus and place has suggested that disengagement can be explained by both communities of practice and of place and an analysis of the public’s relationship with place through the varieties of people-place relations can bring additional insight to understanding the problem. The empirical output of the research includes a Typology of Engagement which disrupts the existing binary approach to engagement and disengagement. The typology incorporates degrees of engagement and, more significantly, degrees of disengagement which, once identified, can be used to inform public engagement strategies, taking into account the wider characteristics of locally affected publics. The findings of the case study offer a new understanding of aspects of disengagement and the findings support the argument that the conceptual approach of a Bourdieusian toolkit combined with a place dimension, can help to better understand the factors leading to disengagement. This opens up new opportunities for research in areas beyond planning, such as climate change, where public engagement could be key to the implementation of future adaptation strategies

Young L2-learners' meaning-making in engaging in computer-assisted language learning

[EN] This study explores how newly arrived young students created meaning, communicated, and expressed themselves using digital technology in the subject of Swedish as a second language (SSL).  The qualitative case study presented in this article focuses on how the orchestration of teaching contributed to opportunities for digital meaning-making in the SSL subject in four classrooms at three schools in a city in Sweden. The notion of language as being fluid, which involves a critical approach to languages as separable entities, considers linguistic and embodied meaning-making, including digital technology, in social processes. This approach recognizes the roles of technology and digital meaning-making in young students’ second language acquisition. Moreover, technological innovations facilitate immediate and accessible communication.  In today’s language studies, ethnicity only is not considered an adequate focus of analysis. Furthermore, the meaning-making practices of newly arrived primary school-aged students remain under-investigated. In the present study, data collected in classroom observations and teacher interviews revealed three themes regarding the students’ utilization of digital technology to develop their multilingual skills. One insight was that the newly arrived students used digital technology strategically when they engaged in meaning-making activities with peers and teachers. When the students took the initiative in computer-assisted language learning, they displayed agency in meaning-making by being their own architects. The findings of this research provided insights into how the orchestration of teaching in Swedish as a second language to newly arrived students affects their opportunities to use multilingualism in meaning-making while employing digital technology.Hell, A.; Godhe, A.; Wennås Brante, E. (2021). 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Non-spurious correlations between genetic and linguistic diversities in the context of human evolution

This thesis concerns human diversity, arguing that it represents not just some form of noise, which must be filtered out in order to reach a deeper explanatory level, but the engine of human and language evolution, metaphorically put, the best gift Nature has made to us. This diversity must be understood in the context of (and must shape) human evolution, of which the Recent Out-of-Africa with Replacement model (ROA) is currently regarded, especially outside palaeoanthropology, as a true theory. It is argued, using data from palaeoanthropology, human population genetics, ancient DNA studies and primatology, that this model must be, at least, amended, and most probably, rejected, and its alternatives must be based on the concept of reticulation. The relationships between the genetic and linguistic diversities is complex, including interindividual genetic and behavioural differences (behaviour genetics) and inter-population differences due to common demographic, geographic and historic factors (spurious correlations), used to study (pre)historical processes. It is proposed that there also exist nonspurious correlations between genetic and linguistic diversities, due to genetic variants which can bias the process of language change, so that the probabilities of alternative linguistic states are altered. The particular hypothesis (formulated with Prof. D. R. Ladd) of a causal relationship between two human genes and one linguistic typological feature is supported by the statistical analysis of a vast database of 983 genetic variants and 26 linguistic features in 49 Old World populations, controlling for geography and known linguistic history. The general theory of non-spurious correlations between genetic and linguistic diversities is developed and its consequences and predictions analyzed. It will very probably profoundly impact our understanding of human diversity and will offer a firm footing for theories of language evolution and change. More specifically, through such a mechanism, gradual, accretionary models of language evolution are a natural consequence of post-ROA human evolutionary models. The unravellings of causal effects of inter-population genetic differences on linguistic states, mediated by complex processes of cultural evolution (biased iterated learning), will represent a major advance in our understanding of the relationship between cultural and genetic diversities, and will allow a better appreciation of this most fundamental and supremely valuable characteristic of humanity - its intrinsic diversity

Going Deeper into Action Recognition: A Survey

Understanding human actions in visual data is tied to advances in complementary research areas including object recognition, human dynamics, domain adaptation and semantic segmentation. Over the last decade, human action analysis evolved from earlier schemes that are often limited to controlled environments to nowadays advanced solutions that can learn from millions of videos and apply to almost all daily activities. Given the broad range of applications from video surveillance to human-computer interaction, scientific milestones in action recognition are achieved more rapidly, eventually leading to the demise of what used to be good in a short time. This motivated us to provide a comprehensive review of the notable steps taken towards recognizing human actions. To this end, we start our discussion with the pioneering methods that use handcrafted representations, and then, navigate into the realm of deep learning based approaches. We aim to remain objective throughout this survey, touching upon encouraging improvements as well as inevitable fallbacks, in the hope of raising fresh questions and motivating new research directions for the reader

Hate Speech, Emotions, and Gender Identities : A Study of Social Narratives on Twitter with Trainee Teachers

The objective of this study is, on the one hand, to analyse emotional responses to the construction of hate speech relating to gender identity on Twitter. On the other hand, the objective is to evaluate the capabilities of trainee primary education teachers at constructing alternative counter-narratives to this socially alive issue, surrounding the approval of the Ley de Identidad de Género [Gender Identity Law] in Chile, in 2018. With this two-fold objective in mind, quantitative, descriptive, and inferential analysis and qualitative analysis techniques are all applied. The results inform us of the influence of socially constructed emotions and feelings that are expressed in social narratives. However, the narratives of the participants neither appeared to reach satisfactory levels of reflection on the social issues that stirred their own emotional responses, nor on the conflict between reason and the value judgements that they expressed in the digital debate (counter-narratives). These results point to the need to consider both emotions and feelings, as categories of social analysis, and to reflect on their forms of expression within the framework of education for inclusive democratic citizenship

Verb Diversities of Children With And Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Study of Language Samples

Background: There have been numerous studies that have researched word learning in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). These studies have found that children with DLD present with higher vocabulary deficits compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. Many of these studies’ results suggest that verb learning is the most difficult word type to comprehend in early language development for both TD children and children with DLD. This current study aims to examine verb use in children with and without DLD and to specifically examine their usage of GAP verbs. Methods: Participants included 36 children, 18 TD and 18 DLD who spoke in a SWE dialect. The group classification was determined by three standardized assessments: The Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (PTONI; Ehrler & McGhee, 2008), which was a measure of nonverbal intelligence; the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (GTFA-2; Goldman & Fristoe, 2000), which was a measure of the children’s articulation abilities at the single word level; and the syntax subtest of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Norm Referenced (DELV-NR; Seymour, Roepers, & de Villers, 2005). All language samples were coded using the Systematic Analysis Language Transcription program (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2012). Results: Children with DLD produced fewer verbs and a smaller variety of both main and secondary verbs. Children with DLD also had lower rates of overt forms when producing GAP verbs. Not only did the children with DLD have lower rates of overt bound T/A morphemes, but also lower rates of auxiliary BE forms produced with a GAP verb. Conclusions: These findings indicate that there is no relationship between these two groups and their GAP verb usage, and therefore GAP verb production should not be considered a clinical marker of DLD. Furthermore, although non-GAP verbs likely strengthen the semantic content of a child’s spoken language, the use of GAP verbs do not necessarily flag semantic weaknesses. As speech-language pathologists, we should follow a preventative model by working with classroom teachers and/or parents to continue to encourage children to expand their verb knowledge in both children with DLD and without