Expressions of the City

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City

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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

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

Visual servo control with artificial neural network

In this paper a robotic manipulator system is presented, which uses visual feedback to control both the position and orientation of the manipulator. In this system, visual data from the camera are directly used in the servo control process of the manipulator, without calculations of the inverse kinematics. This approach is achieved by the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) to learn the relationship between the position and the orientation of the manipulator and the joint angles. As there are no pre-stored parameters of the manipulator, the system is adaptable to slight changes in the kinematics of the manipulator or the working environment. Hence, this technique should able to extend the application of robotic technology in some special industrial areas. The results of computer simulations of this system are also presented in the paper.published_or_final_versio

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy modeling of battery residual capacity for electric vehicles

This paper proposes and implements a new method for the estimation of the battery residual capacity (BRC) for electric vehicles (EVs). The key of the proposed method is to model the EV battery by using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system. Different operating profiles of the EV battery are investigated, including the constant current discharge and the random current discharge as well as the standard EV driving cycles in Europe, the U.S., and Japan. The estimated BRCs are directly compared with the actual BRCs, verifying the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed modeling method. Moreover, this method can be easily implemented by a low-cost microcontroller and can readily be extended to the estimation of the BRC for other types of EV batteries.published_or_final_versio

A novel induction machine design suitable for inverter-driven variable speed systems

Induction machines designed for inverter-driven variable speed systems are different from those fed directly from a utility power line. In this paper, a novel design approach for inverter driven induction machines is presented and implemented. This is followed by an investigation on sizing equations and rotor slot shape specifically for this purpose. The proposed approach permits the integration of the design of machines with inverters, comprehensive performance analysis, and system optimization, resulting in 20-30% higher power density for the induction machine than those designed for direct utility power supplies by conventional methods. Simulation analysis and experimental results are presented to substantiate the conclusions.published_or_final_versio

Temperature dependence of current gain of GalnP/GaAs heteroj unction and heterostructure-emitter bipolar transistors

The temperature effect on current gain is presented for GalnP/GaAs heterojunction and heterostructure-emitter bipolar transistors (HBT's and HEBT's). Experimental results showed that the current gain of the HEBT increases with the increase of temperature in the temperature range of 25-125 °C and decreases slightly at temperatures above 150 °C. The smaller the collector current, the larger is the positive differential temperature coefficient. At high current levels, the current gain dependence on temperature is significantly reduced. On the other hand, a large negative coefficient is observed in the HBT in all current range. This finding indicates that the HEBT is a better candidate than the HBT for power devices. © 1999 IEEE Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9383(99)00257-9.published_or_final_versio

Carbon-doped GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition using nitrogen as the carrier gas

The use of nitrogen as the carrier gas in metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) for the growth of carbon-doped GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) is reported. The material quality grown using a nitrogen carrier gas is the same as that of using a hydrogen carrier gas. High carbon doping and hole concentrations of 3 × 1020 and 2 × 1020 cm-3 in GaAs were obtained. The fabricated HBTs showed very good DC and RF performances indicating that nitrogen can be a promising carrier gas for MOCVD growth. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio