Smell as Self-identity: Capitalist Ideology and Olfactory Imagination in Das Parfum’s Multimedia Storytelling

This thesis explores smell as a cultural signifier in Perfume’s multimedia storytelling. By establishing the theoretical ground upon the historical importance of scent, the thesis focuses particularly on its close interrelationships with the politics of identity, an issue elaborated in Patrick Süskind’s novel Das Parfum–Die Geschichte Eines Mörders (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, 1985) as well as its two screen adaptations--the film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (dir. Tom Tykwer, 2006) and the television series Parfum (Netflix, 2018). In virtue of textual analysis and cultural studies on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s discussion on Enlightenment, Martin Heidegger’s Existentialist philosophy, Foucouldian governmentality, and neoliberal language of self-sufficiency, the thesis analyzes how smell could be effectively visualized through cinematic techniques while ideologically decoding Perfume as a critique of capitalist culture that exerts manipulation, standardization, and fragmentation of individual identity. In conclusion, the three texts of Perfume provide the audience with a unique story universe about olfactory imagination to expose people’s struggles with the sense of self under capitalist development. Meanwhile, the thesis proves that smell as a social and cultural discourse has crucial sense in film and media studies, whilst functioning deeply in people’s everyday life

The Impact of Microearthquakes Induced by Reservoir Water Level Rise on Stability of Rock Slope

In order to study the impact of frequent microearthquakes induced by water level rise on the stability of rock bedded slopes in the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) area, Zhaoshuling Landslide (a representative slope) is selected to study. Safety factors based on probability statistics and FLAC3D are used for numerical simulation (under the operating condition that five earthquakes of Intensity IV are applied to slope in succession after water level rises from 145 m to 175 m). Then the slope’s dynamic stability characteristics and failure mechanism are analyzed. The study shows that slope deformation is evidently the result of thrust load. The deformation starts from the steeply dipping segment in the middle part of slip mass and is controlled by the soft interlayer. Shear failure tends to occur along the soft interlayer and the horizontal slip displacement increases from the rear to the front of the slope. The steeply dipping segment shows a general downslide trend. Although the gentle slope platform on the rear edge is relatively stable, it is vulnerable to tensile fractures which are precursors of landslide. Under the same failure probability, as the number of microearthquake occurrences increases, the safety factor of slope under microearthquake action decreases gradually

Mechanical Behavior and Application of a Novel Supporting and Retaining Structure for Slope

This paper proposed a novel supporting and retaining structure used to high-steep building slope reinforcement. It combined with an anti-sliding pile and an inclined supporting column, which is used as a fulcrum on the upper part of pile. The mechanical characteristics of the novel supporting and retaining structure are studied firstly by two mechanical methods and two numerical methods, respectively. Result shows that the axial force will be evenly distributed along the column body and it provide a quite resistant force, meanwhile. There are two shear force concentrated areas of the anti-sliding pile, one is from the top of the embedded area of the pile body to the potential slip plane, the other is at the joint. Subsequently, the results of these methods are compared synthetically and the differences between the results are also discussed. It shows that a large shear force and moment will be caused at the restrained end of the pile body by the force method and 2D numerical model 1. And in Wenkler model and the 2D numerical model 2, the rock is considered non-rigid, the anti-sliding pile will produce a certain amount of deflection under the sliding thrust, which reduces the shear force and moment at the top of the embedded area of the pile body. Finally, the novel supporting and retaining structure is applied to the site, and the monitoring data shows that the novel supporting and retaining structure is economic and effective for the reinforcement of the high-steep building slope

Robust Saliency-Aware Distillation for Few-shot Fine-grained Visual Recognition

Recognizing novel sub-categories with scarce samples is an essential and challenging research topic in computer vision. Existing literature addresses this challenge by employing local-based representation approaches, which may not sufficiently facilitate meaningful object-specific semantic understanding, leading to a reliance on apparent background correlations. Moreover, they primarily rely on high-dimensional local descriptors to construct complex embedding space, potentially limiting the generalization. To address the above challenges, this article proposes a novel model called RSaG for few-shot fine-grained visual recognition. RSaG introduces additional saliency-aware supervision via saliency detection to guide the model toward focusing on the intrinsic discriminative regions. Specifically, RSaG utilizes the saliency detection model to emphasize the critical regions of each sub-category, providing additional object-specific information for fine-grained prediction. RSaG transfers such information with two symmetric branches in a mutual learning paradigm. Furthermore, RSaG exploits inter-regional relationships to enhance the informativeness of the representation and subsequently summarize the highlighted details into contextual embeddings to facilitate the effective transfer, enabling quick generalization to novel sub-categories. The proposed approach is empirically evaluated on three widely used benchmarks, demonstrating its superior performance.Comment: Under Revie

Integration of Holistic Tourism and Urban Renewal: Experiences and Implications from Chengdu

This paper, based on the concept of holistic tourism development, explores the interplay between holistic tourism and urban renewal, with a focus on Chengdu as the research subject. It analyzes the impact of organic urban renewal on the construction of tourism demonstration areas. Through field investigations and data analysis, this paper summarizes Chengdu’s successful experiences in urban renewal and tourism demonstration area construction, and presents policy recommendations for dissemination to other cities. The research results provide strong support for the implementation of holistic tourism models while offering insights for the sustainable development of urban renewal

Theoretical Study on Relaxed Surrounding Rock Pressure on Shallow Bias Neighborhood Tunnels under Seismic Load

To study the distribution of relaxed surrounding rock pressure on the shallow bias neighborhood tunnels under the combined action of horizontal and vertical earthquake force, finite element software was used for failure mode analysis. Moreover, with the pseudo-static method, the calculation formula for the relaxed pressure on the shallow bias neighborhood tunnels was derived and used to analyze the variation of the rupture angle of these tunnels under the action of the seismic force. The study shows that: shallow bias neighborhood tunnels basically follow a “W” failure pattern under the combined action of horizontal and vertical seismic force, and the failure scope of the surrounding rock is controlled by four rupture angles. Rupture angles β2 and β3 between the deep and shallow tunnels of the shallow bias neighborhood tunnels are not affected by the surface slope. For tunnels with the same grade of the surrounding rock, the greater the seismic intensity, the smaller the value of β2, and the greater the value of β3. While at the same seismic intensity, the higher the grade of the surrounding rock, the smaller the β2 and β3. Ruptures angles β1 and β4 are influenced by the surface slope, seismic intensity and surrounding rock grades. A steeper surface slope leads to a smaller β1 and a greater β4; β1 increase and β4 decrease with increasing seismic intensity; while, β1 and β4 both show a decreasing trend with an increasing rock grade

Predictor-Corrector LU-SGS Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Method for Conservation Laws

Efficient implicit predictor-corrector LU-SGS discontinuous Galerkin (DG) approach for compressible Euler equations on unstructured grids is investigated by adding the error compensation of high-order term. The original LU-SGS and GMRES schemes for DG method are discussed. Van Albada limiter is employed to make the scheme monotone. The numerical experiments performed for the transonic inviscid flows around NACA0012 airfoil, RAE2822 airfoil, and ONERA M6 wing indicate that the present algorithm has the advantages of low storage requirements and high convergence acceleration. The computational efficiency is close to that of GMRES scheme, nearly 2.1 times greater than that of LU-SGS scheme on unstructured grids for 2D cases, and almost 5.5 times greater than that of RK4 on unstructured grids for 3D cases

Effects of Acetylene Addition to the Fuel Stream on Soot Formation and Flame Properties in an Axisymmetric Laminar Coflow Ethylene/Air Diffusion Flame

The effects of adding acetylene to the fuel stream on soot formation and flame properties were investigated numerically in a laminar axisymmetric coflow ethylene/air diffusion flame using the open-source flame code Co-Flame in conjunction with an elementary gas-phase chemistry scheme and detailed transport and thermodynamic database. Radiation heat transfer of the radiating gases (H2O, C2H2, CO, and CO2) and soot was calculated using a statistical narrow-band correlated-k-based wide band model coupled with the discrete-ordinates method. The soot formation was described by the consecutive steps of soot nucleation, surface growth of soot particles via polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)-soot condensation or the hydrogen abstraction acetylene addition (HACA) mechanism, and soot oxidation. The added acetylene affected the flame structure and soot concentration through not only chemical reactions among different species but also radiation effects. The chemical effect due to the added acetylene had a significant impact on soot formation. Specifically, it was confirmed that the addition of 10% acetylene caused an increase in the peak soot volumetric fraction (SVF) by 14.9% and the peak particle number density by about 21.1% (z = 1.5 cm). Furthermore, increasing acetylene concentration led to higher concentrations of propargyl, benzene, and PAHs and consequently directly enhanced soot nucleation rates. In addition, the increased H mole fractions also accentuated the soot surface growth. In contrast, the radiation effect of the addition of 10% acetylene was much weaker, resulting in slightly lower flame temperature and SVF, which in turn reduced the radiant heat loss

A multi-subgroup predictive model based on clinical parameters and laboratory biomarkers to predict in-hospital outcomes of plasma exchange-centered artificial liver treatment in patients with hepatitis B virus-related acute-on-chronic liver failure

BackgroundPostoperative risk stratification is challenging in patients with hepatitis B virus-related acute-on-chronic liver failure (HBV-ACLF) who undergo artificial liver treatment. This study characterizes patients’ clinical parameters and laboratory biomarkers with different in-hospital outcomes. The purpose was to establish a multi-subgroup combined predictive model and analyze its predictive capability.MethodsWe enrolled HBV-ACLF patients who received plasma exchange (PE)-centered artificial liver support system (ALSS) therapy from May 6, 2017, to April 6, 2022. There were 110 patients who died (the death group) and 110 propensity score-matched patients who achieved satisfactory outcomes (the survivor group). We compared baseline, before ALSS, after ALSS, and change ratios of laboratory biomarkers. Outcome prediction models were established by generalized estimating equations (GEE). The discrimination was assessed using receiver operating characteristic analyses. Calibration plots compared the mean predicted probability and the mean observed outcome.ResultsWe built a multi-subgroup predictive model (at admission; before ALSS; after ALSS; change ratio) to predict in-hospital outcomes of HBV-ACLF patients who received PE-centered ALSS. There were 110 patients with 363 ALSS sessions who survived and 110 who did not, and 363 ALSS sessions were analyzed. The univariate GEE models revealed that several parameters were independent risk factors. Clinical parameters and laboratory biomarkers were entered into the multivariate GEE model. The discriminative power of the multivariate GEE models was excellent, and calibration showed better agreement between the predicted and observed probabilities than the univariate models.ConclusionsThe multi-subgroup combined predictive model generated accurate prognostic information for patients undergoing HBV-ACLF patients who received PE-centered ALSS