Analysis of Chinglish from the Perspective of Feminism

Xi Yan is one of the protagonists and plays a significant role in Chinglish. The paper applies feminism to analyze Xi Yan and to find out what it represents. As opposed to the traditional women, Xi Yan goes after physical pleasure and spiritual fulfillment and gains both spiritual and physical freedom. In contrast with Chinese men, she performs even better than men and wins a certain economic and social status. In terms of foreign men, she prevails in the relationship with Daniel, which is a symbol of the rise of women that portends the rise of China.The findings demonstrate that: Xi Yan symbolizes the transformation of modern women from being suppressed to the pursuit of spiritual and physical liberation; she is on behalf of strong women who try to improve the situation of women, in pursuit of equality; and the change in the relative power of male and female reveals the variation tendency of the relative force of the East and the West

The Journeys of the Heart of the Two Women in A Passage to India

A Passage to India is the magnum opus of E. M. Forster—a famous English novelist in the first half of 20th century. This essay does a comparative study about the different changing courses in the two heroines’ mind in India. Adela, one of them, tends to spiritualism from traditional English rationalism (materialism or literalism). While the other, Mrs. Moore, goes roughly from emotionalism to rationalism. However, there are two diverse outcomes: Adela builds her new mental scene finally, but Mrs. Moore fails to remodel herself after the collapse of her perceptual world. And the paper makes a deep analysis on the reason giving rise to such results. It is found, there are two main reasons. One is the different importance of the original values in their soul. The other one is the disparate conflict resolution styles when great changes happen in their inner heart

On Kaneko congruences

Plan B paper, M.A., Mathematics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2012We present a proof of certain congruences modulo powers of an odd prime for the coefficients of a series produced by repeated application of U -operator to a certain weakly holomorphic modular form. This kind of congruences were first observed by Kaneko as a result of numerical experiments, and later proved in a different (but similar) case by Guerzhoy [6]. It is interesting to note that, in our case, the congruences become different, both experimentally and theoretically, depending on whether the prime is congruent to 1 or 3 modulo 4

Ensemble Kalman filter assimilation of Doppler radar data for the initialization and prediction of convective storms.

Finally, the EnSRF is applied to the May 29-30, 2004 central Oklahoma tornadic thunderstorm case. The initial storm environment is either horizontally homogeneous as defined by a single sounding or is three dimensional as obtained from a 3DVAR analysis of all available conventional observations. A full suite of model physics is employed in the latter case. Radial velocity and reflectivity from either one or two WSR-88D radars are assimilated. The results of the EnSRF analysis and the subsequent forecast are presented and a number of issues are discussed.For convective-scale prediction, microphyiscs parameterization is a major source of model error. Parameter estimation via state augmentation using an variant of EnKF, the ensemble square root filter (EnSRF), is applied to the correction of errors in fundamental parameters common in single-moment ice microphysics schemes, after parameter sensitivity and identifiability are examined. OSSEs are performed in which individual parameters are estimated separately or in different combinations. The estimation of individual parameters is successful while the level of difficulty increases as more parameters are estimated simultaneously. Explanations will be given as to why under certain circumstances the filter fails to estimate the correct values of parameters. Still, the state estimation is generally improved even when estimated parameters are inaccurate.As a first implementation, the simulated observations of radial velocity and reflectivity for a supercell thunderstorm are directly assimilated. The EnKF method is found to be able to retrieve accurately multiple microphysical species associated with a multi-class ice microphysics scheme. The relative role of radial velocity and reflectivity data as well as their spatial coverage in recovering the full flow and cloud fields are compared. The cross-covariance is shown to play an important role in retrieving variables indirectly related to the observations.Assimilation of Doppler radar data is very important for storm-scale NWP. To retrieve dynamically consistent wind, thermodynamic and microphysical fields from radar radial velocity and reflectivity, advanced data assimilation methods are required. This work explores the ability of the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) methods in assimilating Doppler radar data for thunderstorm initialization and prediction, as well as parameter estimation

Human regulatory T cell physiology - Lessons learnt from newborns and adults

Human Regulatory T (Treg) cells play a critical role in the immune homeostasis. Hence, understanding Treg cell physiology is of vital importance. Various soluble factors, including IL-10 and short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), contribute to the transplacental immune programming by shaping the fetal immune system, specifically Treg cells. Therefore, this thesis aims to provide further evidence for the Treg cell transplacental programming, and to explain how SCFAs contribute to this process. We demonstrated that the absence of maternal gut microbiota caused significantly reduced fetal thymus size and fewer thymic Foxp3+ Treg cell numbers, which could be rescued by supplementation of acetate. Moreover, the fetal-maternal correlation of serum acetate implied that maternal acetate likely crossed the placenta. TCR sequencing data also suggested that fetal antigen receptor immunity was not inherited, but rather driven by local immunomodulatory factors. Taken together, it indicated that maternally acquired metabolites (acetate) play an important role in shaping fetal thymic development and output, hence exerting their influences on fetal immunity. In addition to the context of pregnancy, this thesis extends the knowledge of SCFAs to both neonate and adult immune cells in vitro. We are the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of SCFAs in Treg cell differentiation via histone acetylation inhibition in vitro in humans. We also proved the tolerogenic effects of SCFAs on other immune cells in humans, including MoDCs and different T cell subsets. These results highlight the essential role of SCFAs in immune tolerance, particularly in Treg cell physiology. Collectively, this study provides theoretical evidence for a non-pharmaceutical approach. Since diet is closely interlinked with the composition of gut microbiota and SCFAs production, dietary interventions may alleviate or treat allergies and autoimmune diseases via modulating Treg cells

Influence of time-dependence on failure of echelon rock joints through a novel DEM model

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in [European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering] on [September 2015], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/19648189.2015.1064624This article investigates the time-dependent influence on the shear failure behaviour of parallel rock joints in the echelon arrangement due to chemical weathering, which can be treated as a generalised time-dependency of the rock material. A time-dependent parameter alpha, identifying the accumulated relative mass removal of bonding material, has been implemented into a novel distinct element method bond contact model. This model is based on a series of mechanical test on bonded aluminium rods with different bond geometries. The numerical direct shear test results of echelon rock joints characterised by different values of alpha show that increasing time-dependent parameter alpha can lead to a lower crack initiation and peak stresses. This is accompanied by a growing ratio of the microscopic compressive-shear-torsional (CST) bond failure number of bond failures to the total number of failures, except for the case without weathering influence. High values of alpha render the material bridge a weaker part to be cut through, generating a large number of CST bond breakages along the central shear axis.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft