Rhetorical Democracy: An Examination of the Presidential Inaugural Addresses

Despite the fact that there is nothing in the Constitution requiring it, nor prescribed by any other federal law, the President\u27s delivery of an inaugural address has become a de facto requirement of the official Presidential inauguration. The Presidential inaugural address is an anticipated feature of all inaugural ceremonies because it is where the newly elected president outlines, among other things, his perspective on the manner, conduct and overall form of the American government. Within this outline, the rhetoric utilized by the President during inaugural addresses shapes the way in which the American people understand our system of government on both a theoretical and functional level. This research examines the utilization of the term “democracy” in presidential inaugural speeches as a rhetorical device and the impacts of this terminology upon conceptions of American governance. This rhetorical analysis provides a lens to view the changing dynamics of American political thought

Wartime China’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression: Changing Interpretations and Perspectives

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo in northeast China. Hoping to avoid an all-out war with Japan, China pursued a policy of appeasement and did not resist the occupation of China. Nonetheless, in 1937 the Japanese launched a massive attack against Beijing and the eastern coastal cities of China and continued its assault until World War II ended in August 1945. This period, known as the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, has seen many shifts in its historical narrative. After Japan surrendered, a full-fledged civil war broke out between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Nationalist/Kuomintang (KMT). The 1949 victory of the CPC and subsequent Mao Zedong era (1949-1976) limited the Chinese memory of the war of against Japanese aggression. However, following the death of Mao, China began a “new remembering” of this war. Our research examines the changing interpretations and perspectives of wartime China in the Mao and post-Mao eras. In addition to academic literature on the subject, our paper draws upon our first-hand exploration of Chinese government-sponsored wartime museums and sites from our research trip to China in June, 2010. Our paper also evaluates the challenges that the Chinese government has encountered as it works to advance a comprehensive history that details the contributions of both the Nationalists and the Communists in the War against Japanese Aggression

Toward alive art

Electronics is about to change the idea of art and drastically so. We know this is going to happen - we can feel it. Much less clear to most of us are the hows, whens and whys of the change. In this paper, we will attempt to analyze the mechanisms and dynamics of the coming cultural revolution, focusing on the «artistic space» where the revolution is taking place, on the interactions between the artistic act and the space in which the act takes place and on the way in which the act modifies the space and the space the act. We briefly discuss the new category of «electronic artists». We then highlight what we see as the logical process connecting the past, the present and our uncertain future. We examine the relationship between art and previous technologies, pointing to the evolutionary, as well as the revolutionary impact of new means of expression. Against this background we propose a definition for what we call «Alive Art», going on to develop a tentative profile of the performers (the «Alivers»). In the last section, we describe two examples of Alive Artworks, pointing out the central role of what we call the "Alive Art Effect" in which we can perceive relative independence of creation from the artist and thus it may seem that unique creative role of artist is not always immediate and directly induced by his/her activity. We actually, emphasized that artist's activities may result in unpredictable processes more or less free of the artist's will

FGFR1-5HT1AR heteroreceptor complexes differently modulate GIRK currents in the hippocampus and the raphe nucleus of control rats and of a genetic rat model of depression

The midbrain raphe serotonin neurons provide the main ascending serotonergic projection to the forebrain, including the hippocampus, which has a recognized role in the pathophysiology of depressive disorder. The activation of G protein-coupled inwardly-rectifying potassium (GIRK) channels by serotonin 5HT1A receptors at the soma-dendritic level of serotonergic raphe neurons and glutamatergic hippocampal pyramidal neurons reduces neuronal activity. The presence of FGFR1-5HT1A heteroreceptor complexes in this raphe-hippocampal serotonin neuron system has been demonstrated, but functional receptor-receptor interactions in the heterocomplexes have only been studied in CA1 pyramidal neurons of control Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. In the present research, the short-term effects of FGFR1-5HT1A complex activation were studied in hippocampal pyramidal neurons, both in CA1 and CA2 areas, and midbrain dorsal raphe serotonergic neurons of SD rats and a genetic rat model of depression, the Flinders sensitive line (FSL) rats selected from SD strain, using an electrophysiological technique. The results obtained demonstrate that FGFR1-5HT1A heteroreceptor activation by specific agonists reduced the ability of the 5HT1AR protomer to open the GIRK channels via the allosteric inhibitory interplay produced by agonist activation of the FGFR1 protomer, resulting in increased neuronal firing in the raphe-hippocampal 5HT system of SD rats. In contrast, apart from CA2 neurons, the inhibitory allosteric effects of FGFR1 agonist on the 5HT1AR protomer were unable to have this influence on GIRK channels in FSL rats. According to these data, 5HT1AR activation impaired hippocampal plasticity in both SD and FSL rats, as determined by long-term potentiation induction capability in the CA1 field, but not in SD rats following simultaneous FGFR1-5HT1A heterocomplex activation. While, due to the impairment in heterocomplex activation, long-term potentiation was precluded in FSL rats. It is thus hypothesized that in the genetic FSL model of depression, there is a considerable decrease of the allosteric inhibition mediated by the FGFR1 protomer on the 5HT1AR protomer, resulting in a reduced opening of the GIRK channels in the raphe-hippocampal serotonin pathway. The consequent increase in inhibition in dorsal raphe 5HT nerve cells and glutamatergic hippocampal CA1 pyramidal nerve cell firing may contribute to the onset of major depression

Is Morphological Awareness a Relevant Predictor of Reading Fluency and Comprehension? New Evidence From Italian Monolingual and Arabic-Italian Bilingual Children

In the current study we examined the contribution of morphological awareness to reading competence in a group of Italian L1 and Arabic-Italian early L2 children, i.e., exposed to Italian before 3 years of age. Children from first to fifth grade (age range: 6 to 11 years old) were tested on a range of morphological awareness and lexical tasks. Reading ability was tested through standardized tests of reading fluency and comprehension. Results showed that L1 children outperformed L2 on every measure of morphological awareness, as well as on reading tests. Regression analyses revealed that morphological awareness contributed to a different extent to reading ability across groups. Accuracy in the morphological awareness tasks was a significant predictor of word (and non-word) reading fluency in L1 and L2 first and second graders, while only in L1 third to fifth graders, response times and accuracy to a morphological awareness task explained a unique amount of variance in reading comprehension. Our results highlight the critical role of morphological processing in reading efficiency and suggest that a training inspired by morphological awareness may improve reading skills also in bilingual students

Strategy and Organization of Born-global Firms: A Configurational Analysis

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