Audio description of audiovisual programmes for the visually impaired in Hong Kong

Audio description (AD) is a means of translating visual and sound elements in audiovisual programmes, as well as in the performing and visual arts, into verbal elements, thus making these materials accessible to viewers with visual impairments. It has been a major area of interest within the field of audiovisual translation studies in recent years and a considerable amount of literature has been published on end users’ reception in Western countries. When it comes to the Chinese speaking world, little literature is available on AD reception studies and no previous works have investigated the media uses and gratifications of the blind and the partially sighted in Hong Kong. The main purpose of this research is to examine the media use behaviour and motivations as well as the reception and preferences of the visually impaired audiences when consuming AD. After examining the main characteristics of AD and its history in Hong Kong, the study focuses on a media accessibility survey under the uses and gratifications framework, and an AD reception study. The views of 44 blind and partially sighted participants are elicited through individual face-to-face interviews. During the reception study, a pre-questionnaire, a questionnaire proper, experimental clips with different versions of AD, and a post-questionnaire were used to identify their AD preferences. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The results reveal that the participants are not satisfied with the current provision of AD services, they demand higher volumes of materials with AD, and have certain AD preferences that if taken properly into account by the industry could help improve their comprehension of audiovisual programmes. The findings offer important insights into the situation of AD in Hong Kong and recommendations are put forward for future developments to serve the community, especially in terms of training audio describers

On the rate distortion functions of memoryless sources under a magnitude-error criterion

We consider the evaluation of and bounds for the rate distortion functions of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) sources under a magnitude-error criterion. By refining the ingeneous approach of Tan and Yao we evaluate explicitly the rate distortion functions of larger classes of i.i.d. sources and we obtain families of lower bounds for arbitrary i.i.d. sources

Gay specificity: the re-working of heteronormative discourse in the Hong Kong gay community

This qualitative research is a study on the specific culture of the gay community in Hong Kong. Mainstream academic research in Hong Kong gay community has mostly focused on the construction and formation of gay identity and gay culture especially under the postcolonial context of Hong Kong. By adopting narrative analysis of the life histories of gay men, the research focus has been placed upon their self-recognition of gay identity, closet practices, coming out process, and sexual and intimate relationship. In response to this mainstream agenda, this study purports to two relatively neglected empirical phenomena concerning Hong Kong gay community, namely the adoption of zero-one role division and the marginalisation of the sissy gay men. These two contentious issues define my research focus.AsiaPacifiQueer Network, Australian National Universit

Potential of mixed consortium of Enterobacteriaceae and Serratia marcescens in synthetic wastewater treatment and power generation in microbial fuel cell

Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is a promising technology that can treat wastewater and generate electricity simultaneously. Basic principle of an MFC uses microorganism in the form of biofilm that is cultivated on surface of anode that oxidizes the substrate provided. Common challenge faced for the realization of this technology in actual wastewater treating system includes the strict control of specific microbial strain growth throughout the treatment period. To overcome this, the performance of using common water-borne bacteria as the extracellular electron transfer (EET) strain was evaluated. A total of 14 water-borne bacteria, mostly from Enterobacteriaceae family, were isolated and subsequently identified from two different water sources, one with a more diverse community in an open system (lake) while the other is a more controlled environment in a closed system (household aquarium). Two dual-chambered MFC were set-up with different anode materials made up of graphite plate and carbon cloth to study the growth of a mixed consortium of bacteria isolated from lake water and pure culture from aquarium on respective electrode surface. Glucose, lactate, acetate, fumarate, and lastly fumarate coupled with lactate were then supplied as synthetic wastewater to determine power generation and wastewater treating ability. Pure culture of Serratia marcescens isolated from household aquarium were then used in similar set-up to evaluate their effect on MFC. The power densities generated from two reactors with different anode materials showed that the mixture of waterborne bacteria demonstrated better growth on graphite plate compared with carbon cloth. All reactors were capable in generating low amount of electricity, with highest at 0.90 mW/m2 through using fumarate coupled with lactate, lowest for all reactors when using glucose. This is due to the position of glucose in the respiratory pathway as compared to acetate. Additionally, MFC was able to utilise substrate inoculated efficiently, with high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) removal recorded at 95% when fumarate was supplied with lactate. However, low Coulombic Efficiency (CE) value was obtained which suggests electron loss during the EET process to other respiratory process or pathways such as methanogenesis. While it can generate power and treat synthetic wastewater, efforts such as characterisation, and engineering from the genetic aspects were still needed for these organisms to be applied in an MFC

On the rate distortion function of a memoryless gaussian vector source whose components have fixed variances

Consider a memoryless Gaussian vector source and assume that the variances of the components of its i.i.d. vectors are known and that no further information on their covariance structure is available. We study the dependence of the rate distortion function of such a source on the covariance structure of its i.i.d. vectors. In particular we give a lower bound of the rate distortion function, expressed only in terms of the known variances, and we show that it is tighter than the Shannon lower bound over a certain distortion region

Enhancement of ATP generation capacity, antioxidant activity and immunomodulatory activities by Chinese Yang and Yin tonifying herbs

Chinese tonifying herbs such as Herba Cistanche, Ganoderma and Cordyceps, which possess antioxidant and/or immunomodulatory activities, can be useful in the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases. Pharmacological studies on Yang and Yin tonifying herbs suggest that Yang tonifying herbs stimulate mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) generation, presumably through the intermediacy of reactive oxidant species, leading to the enhancement of cellular/mitochondrial antioxidant status. Yin tonifying herbs, however, apart from possessing antioxidant properties, exert mainly immunomodulatory functions that may boost a weak immune system and may also suppress overreactive immune responses. The abilities of Yang and Yin Chinese tonifying herbs to enhance ATP generation and to exhibit antioxidant and/or immunomodulatory actions are the pharmacological basis for their beneficial effects on the retardation of aging

Understanding pandemic behaviours in Singapore – Application of the Terror Management Health Model

The novel coronavirus, now known as COVID-19, was first reported in China in December 2019 and became a global crisis by March 2020. Both adaptive and maladaptive behaviours were observed in response to aspects of the crisis, some of which appeared to be contradictory to coping and curbing the threat of COVID-19. For instance, the purchase and use of surgical masks and sanitisers could be understood as logical health-oriented behaviours relevant to coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. The breaching of social distancing measures and forwarding unverified news, however, might have done more harm than good. In applying the proximal and distal defences proposed within the Terror Management Health Model (TMHM), this article suggests explanations for these behaviours as individuals’ attempts to alleviate anxiety arising from reminders of their mortality. Information from local newspapers and media is used to highlight and identify common behaviours observed in the pandemic, and the TMHM is applied to explain these behaviours. This paper briefly concludes with a call for empirical validation of the TMHM for the behaviours observed in relation to COVID-19, and for the use of TMHM conceptualisations to develop countermeasures to reduce maladaptive behaviours in the current, and future, pandemics in Singapore

Currency option pricing with Wishart process

AbstractIt has been well-documented that foreign exchange rates exhibit both mean reversion and stochastic volatility. In addition to these, recent empirical evidence shows a stochastic skew of implied volatility surface from currency option data, which means that the slope of implied volatility curve of a given maturity is stochastically time varying. This paper develops a currency option pricing model which accommodates for this phenomena. The proposed model postulates that the log-currency value follows a mean reverting process with stochastic volatility driven by Wishart process under risk-neutral measure. Pricing formula for European currency option is derived in terms of Fourier Transform. Benchmarking against the Monte Carlo simulation, our numerical examples reveal that the pricing formula is accurate and remarkably efficient. The proposed model is also generalized to include jumps. The ability of the our model on capturing stochastic skew is illustrated through a numerical example