Literary stylistics: poetry and fictional prose

What are the major differences between poetry and fictional prose? How do their literary stylistic effects appeal to the readers? This paper will discuss poetry and prose, and the comparison and contrast between them. Then, one piece of poem and one piece of fictional prose under the theme called a child being unable to put up with school life will be selected to firstly 1) analyze their stylistic effects individually, and to secondly 2), compare and contrast their different stylistic effects. A child’s school life will be the main focus of this paper to discuss how difficult a child is to tolerate school life. The comparison and contrast between the poem and the fictional prose is so profound that the stylistic effects could be more prominent. How did the two writers make use of the specific stylistic effects of a particular form – poetry and fictional prose respectively, to voice out how a child goes through an intolerable school life? This essay will end up analyzing their stylistic effects in relation to the projection of the theme of a child’s school life.postprin

In the Act of Performance: Where is the 'Self'?

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Prologue – Life-Writing as a Journey to Myanmar (formerly Burma)

Saving Fish from Drowning, the most recent book of Amy Tan, once came to the 7th position as the bestseller in 2006 (Paperback, Best-Seller). ‘This is the first time Ballantine published Amy Tan in trade paper first; in the past, the publisher did her books initially in mass market, then in trade. It worked – there are 290,000 copies in print after 8 printings… These brought huge turnout and great sales. While previous works of Amy Tan focus on mother and daughter relationship– issues that are more intimate and personal Saving Fish from Drowning ‘branches out with a broad plot and dynamic digressions with political motifs. The broad plot itself is intriguing, for it invites readers to engage in an unforgettable experience in expedition to Burma. In the journey to Burma, digressions are dynamic. American tourists are missing one by one. They ‘vanish without a trace in the Burmese jungle. What is so unique about this book is that the tone of the work is “ghostly”. ‘Ghosts are a dominant symbol’, as stated in the news article entitled ‘Bumbling down the Burma Road’. The overall style of the fiction is subversive. A novel based on real-life, this work mocks at the ‘ironies of modern life. How can Amy Tan, a renowned AsianAmerican writer born in America with the Chinese descent, write the foreigners’ adventure in the largest country in Mainland Southeast Asia in such an exotic way? These paradoxes: ‘East and West, ‘America and China, ‘new and old ‘memory and forgetting, ‘truth and myth’ intertwine, turning the story into an uncanny story. By uncanny, I mean readers will find all these - ‘East and West, ‘America and China, ‘new and old, ‘memory and forgetting, ‘truth and myth’, unfamiliarly familiar. Readers’ attachment to the story and withdrawal from the story makes the story incredibly fascinating. It is such a marvelous journey! As Carol Memmott notes, it is ‘a game of Survival Burma style conflated with adventure, humor, tragedy and politics (Memmott, Carol). This essay will discuss the representation of adventure in Burma and its possible effects upon readers to demonstrate how insightful this masterpiece is.published_or_final_versio

Expressions of the City

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City

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Letters to the editor-Women still struggle for fair treatment

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The spectacle of “East Meets West”: Postmodernist shopping mall Telford Plaza in Hong Kong

Like a woman embellishing herself in grandeur and elegance, the body of a shopping mall is aesthetically fashioned from time to time. The linear structure of a shopping mall is modernist itself, from which a shopping mall departs, moving towards post-modernity by its narrative fashion. A shopping mall can be postmodernist by departing itself from the modernist linear structure. Telford Plaza, a local shopping mall in Hong Kong, consists of modernist and post-modernist elements, addressing the way of life of Hong Kong people through the spectacle of “the East Meets West”. The interplay of modernist and postmodernist elements evokes compelling sensations to strollers, with which “the East Meets West” resonates.postprin

A letter to Professor David Heywood Parker: Life-writing, writing about life!

Memorial Bookletpostprin

miRPlant : an integrated tool for identification of plant miRNA from RNA sequencing data

Background Small RNA sequencing is commonly used to identify novel miRNAs and to determine their expression levels in plants. There are several miRNA identification tools for animals such as miRDeep, miRDeep2 and miRDeep*. miRDeep-P was developed to identify plant miRNA using miRDeep’s probabilistic model of miRNA biogenesis, but it depends on several third party tools and lacks a user-friendly interface. The objective of our miRPlant program is to predict novel plant miRNA, while providing a user-friendly interface with improved accuracy of prediction. Result We have developed a user-friendly plant miRNA prediction tool called miRPlant. We show using 16 plant miRNA datasets from four different plant species that miRPlant has at least a 10% improvement in accuracy compared to miRDeep-P, which is the most popular plant miRNA prediction tool. Furthermore, miRPlant uses a Graphical User Interface for data input and output, and identified miRNA are shown with all RNAseq reads in a hairpin diagram. Conclusions We have developed miRPlant which extends miRDeep* to various plant species by adopting suitable strategies to identify hairpin excision regions and hairpin structure filtering for plants. miRPlant does not require any third party tools such as mapping or RNA secondary structure prediction tools. miRPlant is also the first plant miRNA prediction tool that dynamically plots miRNA hairpin structure with small reads for identified novel miRNAs. This feature will enable biologists to visualize novel pre-miRNA structure and the location of small RNA reads relative to the hairpin. Moreover, miRPlant can be easily used by biologists with limited bioinformatics skills

Epidemiology of acute primary angle-closure glaucoma in the Hong Kong Chinese population: prospective study.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the incidence of acute primary angle-closure glaucoma in the Hong Kong Chinese population, and to identify risk factors for this condition. DESIGN: Prospective study. SETTING: University teaching hospital, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: Patients with acute primary angle-closure glaucoma presenting between 1 March 1998 and 29 February 2000. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Demographic data, presenting symptoms and signs, temporal details of the presentation, and precipitating factors. The crude regional incidence was calculated according to the Hong Kong population census of 1991 and the age-specific incidence was calculated. RESULTS: Seventy-two cases (72 eyes of 72 patients) of acute primary angle-closure glaucoma were recruited. The crude incidence was 10.4 per 100,000 per year in the population aged 30 years and older. Patients at higher risk of attacks were those aged 70 years or older (age-specific incidence, 58.7 per 100,000 per year) and females, who had a relative risk of 3.8 compared with males (95% confidence interval, 1.7-8.4). Only four (5.6%) patients had a positive family history of acute primary angle-closure glaucoma. Seventeen (23.6%) patients were noted to have an upper respiratory tract infection before the attack, and 25 (34.7%) patients had taken antitussive agents. There was a statistically significant inverse correlation between the monthly attack rate and the monthly rate of influenza (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient = -0.388; P=0.031). CONCLUSION: There is a high incidence of acute primary angle-closure glaucoma among Chinese residents of Hong Kong, with elderly females at highest risk. A significant proportion of patients reported upper respiratory tract infection or the use of antitussive medication prior to attacks.published_or_final_versio