Sinicizing European languages:Lexicographical and literary practices of Pidgin English in nineteenth-century China

his article reconsiders the social, economic, and literary significance of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) in Chinese society by exploring lexicographical and literary practices of pidgin in nineteenth-century China. Resituating the history of CPE in Chinese language history, this article problematizes the concept of pidgin and pursues three arguments. First, the author maintains that CPE arose from the marginalized status of the Euro-American traders who were restricted from learning the Chinese language in Canton. Second, by exploring foreign-language glossaries, this article foregrounds the key role of sinographs and Chinese topolects in mediating and remolding foreign languages. Last, by examining the appropriation of foreign sounds in Cantonese folk songs and Pan Youdu's poetry, this article demonstrates the complex flow of these sounds among different languages and the power of pidgin in transgressing linguistic boundaries

Persistence Equivalence of Discrete Morse Functions on Trees

We introduce a new notion of equivalence of discrete Morse functions on graphs called persistence equivalence. Two functions are considered persistence equivalent if and only if they induce the same persistence diagram. We compare this notion of equivalence to other notions of equivalent discrete Morse functions. We then compute an upper bound for the number of persistence equivalent discrete Morse functions on a fixed graph and show that this upper bound is sharp in the case where our graph is a tree. We conclude with an example illustrating our construction

Numerical modeling on landfast ice in Arctic region

Sea ice is regarded as a significant indicator of climate change in the Arctic Ocean. Landfastice is sea ice that is immobile or almost immobile in coastal regions, decreasing the transfer of heat, moisture, and momentum. As an extension of the land for travel and hunting, landfast ice also influences the construction of ice roads and arctic shipping routes in the summertime. Despite the important role of landfast ice in the climate system, the formation and maintenance of landfast ice are not well simulated by current sea ice models. Lemieux (2015) came up with the grounding scheme, by adding a basal stress term according to the water depth, improving landfast ice representation in shallow regions while underestimating in deep regions especially in the Kara Sea. The two different resolution model configurations with the MIT General Circulation Model (MITgcm) sea ice package is compared in landfast ice simulation in the arctic region. Preliminary results show that a higher resolution model better represents landfast ice in deep regions. The proper illustration of coastlines, which serve as pinning points for sea ice arches, in the high-resolution model can improve the representation of landfast ice. We also apply a new parameterization lateral drag term, a function with sea ice thickness, drift velocity, and coastline intricacy, in the model to better simulate landfast ice. The results suggest a combination of lateral drag and basal stress terms successfully simulates fast ice in most region

Developing an innovative region-wide risk-informed earthquake early warning decision support system

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems provide brief notice to targeted audiences (e.g., civil protection services) of potentially destructive seismic events. This short warning time can be used to take rapid but effective actions for reducing impending earthquake-related losses (e.g., shutting off gas supplies to prevent fires, evacuating the ground floors of buildings to mitigate casualties). Current EEW systems in use around the world do not employ risk-based metrics to support decision making for alert triggering by various end users. Instead, thresholds for issuing EEW alarms are typically based on seismological parameters (e.g., magnitude, ground-shaking intensity value) without regard for the possible consequences of triggering or not the warning. Some recent research efforts have focused on developing risk-informed EEW decision-making methodologies, but these have been limited to applications involving single assets (e.g., buildings) or specific infrastructure systems, and are not suitable for region-wide EEW. This paper addresses the limitations of state-of-the-art in EEW decision making by developing an end-user- and risk-oriented EEW decision support system (EEW DSS) for a building portfolio. The proposed EEW DSS combines conventional seismic risk assessment tools with a multi-criteria decision algorithm that relies on stakeholder risk preference input, and explicitly integrates necessary considerations associated with a region-wide, heterogenous set of buildings (e.g., spatially correlated ground motions, varying impacts of triggering or not the alarm for different building occupancies, etc.). The EEW DSS is tested for a series of earthquakes across a hypothetical urban system (>4,000 buildings). We find that the risk-informed magnitude threshold for alarm issuance increases with distance (as expected), and that the optimal action for a given magnitude/distance may depend on stakeholder risk preferences (consistent with previous studies). The proposed methodology has the potential to convert region-wide EEW systems into powerful people-centered loss-mitigation tools