“TRANSCENDENT EXILES”: THE CULTURES OF AMERICAN FICTION

Literary scholar Mark McGurl asserts that creative writing programs represent significant development in the history of American literary production. Essayist Chad Harbach then asserted the expansion of the MFA program created two cultures of American fiction. This research explores whether writers of color and female writers possess intellectual or economic spaces in this new and changed landscape of American fiction to produce experimental fiction, the kind of fiction considered canon-worthy or avant-garde to push the envelope of the form of fiction. The research also questions the validity of whether MFAs have altered the state of American fiction, incorporating bibliography from a collection of contemporary novelists, short story writers, essayists, literary theorists, and academics on the present state of US literary culture which surrounds writers. Constituent parts of these dynamics include not just creative writing pedagogical methods (the influence of which appears negligible) but also program types based on funding, publishing houses, organized readings, writing prizes, literary magazines, and more of what would be called US literary culture. Here, the findings suggest the ethnic writer travels more dire straits than her contemporaries as she enters the premises of an institution of higher education, where she finds herself caught in the paradox created by American democracy, which leads to questioning the influence and value of American higher education on the fiction of writers of color and female writers.Honors CollegeEnglish, Department o

Optimizing Mixtures of Alkali Aluminosilicate Cement Based on Ternary By-Products

Portland cement is a popular binder but causes many adverse effects on the environment. That is due to the large consumption of raw materials and energy during production while emitting vast amounts of CO2. In recent years, Alkali Aluminosilicate Cement (AAC) has drawn much attention in research and development and promises to become a binder that can replace the traditional cement. In many studies of this binder, the content of the ingredients is often gradually changed to determine the optimal composition. The object of this paper is to optimize the composition of AAC using a combination of three by-products as the primary raw material, including Rush Husk Ash (RHA), Fly Ash (FA), and Ground Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag (GGBS). The investigation was conducted based on the critical parameter SiO2/Al2O3, and the D-optimal design. The FA and the GGBS were industrial product form, while the RHA was ground in a ball mill for 2 hours before mixing. The results show that this type of binder has setting time and soundness to meet standard cement requirements. While comparing to Portland cement, the AAC has a faster setting time, slower development of compressive strength in the early stages but a higher strength at the age of 56 days. According to the highest compressive strength at 28 days and high fly ash content, the optimal composition was RHA of 27.8%, FA of 41.8%, and GGBS of 15.4%, corresponding to the ratio SiO2/Al2O3 of 3.83. In addition, compressive strength at 28 days of the mortar specimens with the optimal binder and the ratio of water/ cement at 0.32 reached 63 MPa. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091724 Full Text: PD

Non-sterile electroweak-scale right-handed neutrinos and the dual nature of the 125-GeV scalar

Can, and under which conditions, the 125-\gev SM-like scalar with the signal strengths for its decays into $W^{+}W^{-}$, $ZZ$, $\gamma \gamma$, $b \bar{b}$ and $\tau \bar{\tau}$ being consistent with experiments be accommodated in models that go beyond the Standard Model? Is it truly what it appears to be, namely the SM Higgs boson, or could it be quite different? A minimal extension of the original electroweak-scale right-handed neutrino model, in which right-handed neutrinos naturally obtain electroweak-scale masses, shows a scalar spectrum which includes either the 125-\gev SM-like scalar or a scalar which is quite {\em unlike} that of the Standard Model, both of which possessing signal strengths compatible with experiment. In other words, the 125-\gev scalar could be an {\em impostor}.Comment: 36 double-column pages, 13 Figures, 9 Tables. Typos corrected. Version to appear in Nuclear Physics

Rice seed image classification based on HOG descriptor with missing values imputation

Rice is a primary source of food consumed by almost half of world population. Rice quality mainly depends on the purity of the rice seed. In order to ensure the purity of rice variety, the recognition process is an essential stage. In this paper, we firstly propose to use histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) descriptor to characterize rice seed images. Since the size of image is totally random and the features extracted by HOG can not be used directly by classifier due to the different dimensions. We apply several imputation methods to fill the missing data for HOG descriptor. The experiment is applied on the VNRICE benchmark dataset to evaluate the proposed approach

Stabilization Control of the Differential Mobile Robot Using Lyapunov Function and Extended Kalman Filter

This paper presents the design of a control model to navigate the differential mobile robot to reach the desired destination from an arbitrary initial pose. The designed model is divided into two stages: the state estimation and the stabilization control. In the state estimation, an extended Kalman filter is employed to optimally combine the information from the system dynamics and measurements. Two Lyapunov functions are constructed that allow a hybrid feedback control law to execute the robot movements. The asymptotical stability and robustness of the closed loop system are assured. Simulations and experiments are carried out to validate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.07112, arXiv:1611.0711

Vehicle logo recognition using histograms of oriented gradient descriptor and sparsity score

Most of vehicle have the similar structures and designs. It is extremely complicated and difficult to identify and classify vehicle brands based on their structure and shape. As we requirea quick and reliable response, so vehicle logos are an alternative method of determining the type of a vehicle. In this paper, we propose a method for vehicle logo recognition based on feature  selection method in a hybrid way. Vehicle logo images are first characterized by histograms of oriented gradient descriptors and the final features vector are then applied feature selection method to reduce the irrelevant information. Moreover, we release a new benchmark dataset for vehicle logo recognition and retrieval task namely, VLR-40. The experimental results are evaluated on this database which show the efficiency of the proposed approach

Data augmentation by combining feature selection and color features for image classification

Image classification is an essential task in computer vision with various applications such as bio-medicine, industrial inspection. In some specific cases, a huge training data is required to have a better model. However, it is true that full label data is costly to obtain. Many basic pre-processing methods are applied for generating new images by translation, rotation, flipping, cropping, and adding noise. This could lead to degrade the performance. In this paper, we propose a method for data augmentation based on color features information combining with feature selection. This combination allows improving the classification accuracy. The proposed approach is evaluated on several texture datasets by using local binary patterns features

GRAPHENE QUANTUM DOTS AS A REDUCING REAGENT AND STABILIZER FOR GREEN SYNTHESIS OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES: TOWARDS A HYDROGEN PEROXIDE AND GLUCOSE SENSOR

In this work, we have developed a simple method for preparation of silver nanoparticles/graphene quantum dots hybrid (AgNPs/GQDs) using graphene quantum dots (GQDs) as reducing reagent and stabilizer. The synthesized GQDs and AgNPs/GQDs hybrid have been characterized by ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), photoluminescence (PL), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results indicated that mono-dispersed AgNPs were obtained with particles size around 30 nm. Based on the etching of silver nanoparticles by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), we have constructed a colorimetric sensor for H2O2 and glucose sensors basing on the use of AgNPs/GQDs hybrid as capture probe and signal probe. The fabricated sensors performed excellent sensitivity and selectivity, high reproducibility for H2O2 and glucose detection with a low detection limit of 100 nM and 0.1 mM for hydrogen peroxide and glucose, respectively