Project-based learning as an instructional tool in teaching ad drafting to students majoring in advertising

As advertising penetrates into all social spheres, it vastly affects the social behavior of different linguocultural communities. While advertisements have a profound effect on the social medium, it is the extent and the various facets of this influence that grab the headlines of scientific research. This article aims to consider one of the leading methods of teaching ad drafting to students majoring in Advertising while focusing mainly on the functions and syntactic characteristics of the advertising discourse. Considering the peculiarities of ad drafting as a class activity, the article brings a focus on the project method as one of the most efficient training frameworks that allows to introduce profession-specific practices into the learning process, promote creativity and foster proactive mindsets in the context of learner-centered practice-oriented training environment. The study highlights the theoretical considerations involved in the study of advertisements, specifically centering around their syntax and functions that include attracting attention, informing, persuading, motivating by offering discounts and gifts, and most importantly encouraging the consumer to choose a particular product or service being advertised. The syntactical peculiarities and nomenclature of the basic functions of advertisements are further on analyzed to explain the corresponding teaching and learning implications and clarify the place and role of the project method in ad drafting training. The authors suggest that while project-based learning implies a lot of creative activity being incorporated into the class, purposeful implementation of projects cannot only be associated with motivational boost, encouragement of personal interest, or a somewhat informal practice of skill transfer: as the article stresses, projects developed as part of the instructional “toolkit” in ad drafting classes should at all times be designed so as to teach students to think strategically. Strategic reasoning, in turn, should be based on the awareness of the functional load behind the language and syntax used in advertising texts. Thus, the paper singles out syntactical features inherent in the advertising discourse (such as, for example, brevity, an abundant use of elliptical constructions, or prevalence of imperative sentences) and makes systemized conclusions regarding the project-based methodological routine most suitable for the purposes of ad drafting classes with students majoring in Advertising

Parabolic Foliations on Three-Manifolds

We prove that every closed orientable three-manifold admits a parabolic foliation

The use of homomorphic image processing to analyze coke grading

The estimation of the geometrical sizes of particles of crushed solid fuel (coke), moving on the conveyor belt, is associated with a number of technical difficulties. One of the problems is the need for a non-invasive way of determining particle geometry. A promising way to solve it is to use devices based on machine vision systems. This paper describes the algorithmic part of the prototype of such a device. It is proposed to improve the quality of boundary detection between fragments of coke particles to perform homomorphic processing of the initial low-contrast video images. The algorithm for calculating the Fourier spectrum has been optimized based on the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) with the mixed base. As a result, it becomes possible to reduce the computational cost for calculating two-dimensional Fourier spectra for complex multiplication operations by 1.33 times, and the number of complex addition operations by 1.67 times. The software of the prototype, built using the proposed methods, made it possible to obtain good convergence of the results for assessing the particle size distribution of samples of crushed coke with laboratory estimates. Thus, the maximum absolute average error of the machine vision system in assessing the size of crushed coke is only 3.37%, and the maximum error for all measurement classes do not exceed 6.9%. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd

Multifractality in Time Series

We apply the concepts of multifractal physics to financial time series in order to characterize the onset of crash for the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index x(t). It is found that within the framework of multifractality, the "analogous" specific heat of the S&P500 discrete price index displays a shoulder to the right of the main peak for low values of time lags. On decreasing T, the presence of the shoulder is a consequence of the peaked, temporal x(t+T)-x(t) fluctuations in this regime. For large time lags (T>80), we have found that C_{q} displays typical features of a classical phase transition at a critical point. An example of such dynamic phase transition in a simple economic model system, based on a mapping with multifractality phenomena in random multiplicative processes, is also presented by applying former results obtained with a continuous probability theory for describing scaling measures.Comment: 22 pages, Revtex, 4 ps figures - To appear J. Phys. A (2000

DIRAC Experiment and Test of Low-Energy QCD

The low-energy QCD predictions to be tested by the DIRAC experiment are revised. The experimental method, the setup characteristics and capabilities, along with first experimental results are reported. Preliminary analysis shows good detector performance: alignment error via $\Lambda$ mass measurement $m_\Lambda = 1115.6 MeV/c^2$ with $\sigma = 0.92 MeV/c^2$, $p \pi^-$ relative momentum resolution $\sigma_Q \approx 2.7 MeV/c$, and evidence for $\pi^

Tightness in contact metric 3-manifolds

This paper begins the study of relations between Riemannian geometry and global properties of contact structures on 3-manifolds. In particular we prove an analog of the sphere theorem from Riemannian geometry in the setting of contact geometry. Specifically, if a given three dimensional contact manifold (M,\xi) admits a complete compatible Riemannian metric of positive 4/9-pinched curvature then the underlying contact structure \xi is tight; in particular, the contact structure pulled back to the universal cover is the standard contact structure on S^3. We also describe geometric conditions in dimension three for \xi to be universally tight in the nonpositive curvature setting.Comment: 29 pages. Added the sphere theorem, removed high dimensional material and an alternate approach to the three dimensional tightness radius estimate

Detection of Pionium with DIRAC

The aim of the DIRAC experiment at CERN is to provide an accurate determination of S-wave pion-pion scattering lengths from the measurement of the lifetime of the pi+ pi- atom. The measurement will be done with precision comparable to the level of accuracy of theoretical predictions, formulated in the context of Chiral Perturbation Theory. Therefore, the understanding of chiral symmetry breaking of QCD will be submitted to a stringent test