Syndrome source coding and its universal generalization

A method of using error-correcting codes to obtain data compression, called syndrome-source-coding, is described in which the source sequence is treated as an error pattern whose syndrome forms the compressed data. It is shown that syndrome-source-coding can achieve arbitrarily small distortion with the number of compressed digits per source digit arbitrarily close to the entropy of a binary memoryless source. A universal generalization of syndrome-source-coding is formulated which provides robustly-effective, distortionless, coding of source ensembles

The Twelve Carrier Act: A Bottomless Pit of Investment

The Texas Orato

Civic Space Inspired by Hawaiian Alignments: Creating a Hawaiian Presence in Puu O Kapolei

The spirit of a place is an important element among communities, especially in those cultures that have a strong connection with the cosmos. Many ancient civilizations used the stars as referential in the placement of their structures and performing spiritual rituals among those spaces, such as the Egyptians aligning their Giza pyramid with the Orion star constellation. In The Orion Mystery: Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids, Robert Bauval discovers that the pyramid location had a strong connection between the dead king Osiris and the constellation of Orion.1 The importance of why the Egyptians did this was reflected in Bauval’s theory that there was spiritual knowledge that enlightened the pyramid builders, creating a portal between earth and the heavens. Similarly, the ancient Hawaiians have placed and built most of their temples, or heiau, to align with the sun's solstice and equinox at strategic locations. Globally, there are many ancient structures that are aligned with the celestial sky, taking examples from the Forbidden City in China, to the ancient Mayan city of Uxmal. Most of these monuments themselves were built for the rulers but also functioned as a civic space that invoked a central power. In the contemporary built environment, the notion of a civic space has evolved into an extension of a community, becoming a public realm of cultural activities and knowledge. The question arises: Do these spaces invoke a traditional and cultural perspective of the indigenous culture? Case studies such as the Uluru Kata-Tjuta Cultural Center in Australia, describes the importance of indigenous culture integration within a civic space. The recognition of native culture is mostly absent in today's perception of the built environment, especially in Hawai`i. This project attempts reconciliation between traditional Hawaiian knowledge of spatial elements, cultural significance, and the tangible and intangible structure of a heiau, and align it with the modern civic space. Methods that accomplish these tasks include historical research, interviews, logical argumentation and case studies. The resulting collective data establishes a set of programs for designing a Hawaiian civic space

Comparando la Educación y Atención de la Primera Infancia desde un enfoque basado en los derechos

This paper pretends to examine how the equal right to quality education and care in the phase of early childhood is developed in different policies, particularly within the processes for the inclusion of children in situations of social risk and exclusion in the European systems of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Extracted from the findings of the author’s PhD, the following pages include some of the main characteristics, as well as the outcomes and the conclusions of the study, which are briefly described, comprising the structure of a comparison on the ECEC policies between three representative countries in Europe. The work attended to the previous studies on early childhood describing ECEC throughout western European societies, to analyse their impact in equity of opportunity considering ECEC as the long life learning base, and discussing its implications for the inter-generational exclusion, in searching policy recommendations to enhance ECEC and child well-being. El presente artículo persigue revisar el modo en que el derecho equitativo a una atención y educación de calidad durante la primera infancia es desarrollado desde las distintas políticas, especialmente dentro de los procesos de inclusión de los niños en situación de riesgo y exclusión social en los sistemas europeos de educación y atención de la primera infancia (EAPI). Las siguientes páginas se extraen de los hallazgos de la tesis doctoral de la autora, incluyendo las principales características, así como se describen brevemente los resultados y conclusiones del estudio, conformando la estructura de una comparación de las políticas de EAPI en tres países representativos en Europa. El trabajo tiene en cuenta los estudios previos sobre la descripción de la EAPI en las sociedades europeas occidentales, para analizar su impacto en la igualdad de oportunidades considerando la EAPI como la base del aprendizaje a lo largo de la vida y debatiendo sus implicaciones en la exclusión intergeneracional, en la búsqueda de recomendaciones políticas para fomentar la EAPI y el bienestar infantil

Dissecting the image of Elsa towards semiotic reading of the Philippine classic film ‘Himala’

Himala (Miracle) is one of the Philippine classic films produced in 1982 by the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines. Aside from several local and international awards given to the film, it was also chosen as the Best Asia-Pacific Film of All Time in 2008 by the CNN and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The film narrates the story of Elsa, who induced the people of Cupang to believe that she had witnessed the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the hill during the eclipse. She also made the people believe that she can heal those who have diseases, that have resulted to many hopefuls flocking on her house. But who is Elsa? This paper focused on dissecting the character of Elsa to present new interpretations of the film. Through Roland Barthes’ Semiotic Theory, the study determined different images of Elsa such as Elsa is a god-like figure; Elsa is a curse, where the tough luck of Cupang came from; and Elsa is a religious prostitute that sells her so-called miracle for those who are hopeless. Using semiotics, it can be said that the film shows not only the socio-cultural, economic, and political issues in the country, but the dismantling of patriarchal society. The reading made to the character of Elsa shows the reconstruction of feminist culture in the film, which proves that women are more powerful than men