Truman Gates and the Transformation of Otherness in the film, Next of Kin

Roger Guy will discuss the concept of otherness and kinfolk from down home who come to the aid of Appalachian migrant and Chicago police officer, Truman Gates as conveyed in the film “Next of Kin” by contrasting and evaluating depictions in the film with those in his own work in the social history of Appalachians in Chicago. Truman Gates represents the assimilated urban Appalachian as contrasted with his rural kinfolk down home who convey his past and the transformation possible for Appalachian migrants. He argues that otherness is a dynamic concept being shaped by those it depicts as well as those who apply it as an explanatory concept

The reproduction of cultural aspects in dictionaries in French and the Gabonese languages

The reproduction of culture in dictionaries constitutes one of the fundamental prob-lems of lexicographers today. What is the nature of cultural data in dictionaries? To what extent should cultural aspects be transferred from one language to another? How should this transfer take place? This article attempts to discuss the relevance of the reproduction of Gabonese cultural aspects in dictionaries in French and the Gabonese languages. One of the main problems the compilers of these dictionaries encountered was the transfer and the translation of some cultural aspects. In order to discuss the nature and extent of cultural information in Gabonese dictionaries, this article will restrict itself to the following points: — The translation of different realities — The role of culture in the change of meaning — Dictionaries and cultural activities — Dictionaries and cultural ethics — Dictionaries and language registers — Dictionaries and culture maintenance — Dictionaries and the standardization of culture Prior to a discussion of the above-mentioned points, a brief description of the dictionaries investi-gated will be given. After a description of the influence of cultural contexts on lexicographers in the choice of macrostructural elements and their treatment, cultural differences between source and target languages in the dictionaries of Gabonese languages are discussed. The article concludes with the observation that the majority of existing lexicographic works tend to survey the full vocabulary of the language. The lexicographic treatment of some words is satisfactory because an account of the underlying worldview of the people is given. For example, in this article, the fol-lowing themes are considered: dietary practices, sexuality, mythology, traditional pharmacopoeia, the kinship system, hospitality, and respect for traditional authority and elders. However, to be used in the most efficient way, these lexicographic publications need to be revised

Kinematics-based tracking of cells and fluorescent beads using feature vectors

Tracking of cells or fluorescent beads from images of deforming or developing biological systems is a central challenge in biomechanics. In the former case, the objective is often to find the same cell in a tissue or on a Petri dish that has been imaged before and after time in an incubator. In the latter case, the objective is often to estimate mechanical tractions based upon displacement of fluorescent beads embedded in a defined extracellular matrix. A great number of techniques exist for this purpose, and all face challenges in matching cells and beads from one image to the next and in identifying mismatches. Here, we present a simple, fast, and effective technique for matching cells and beads using “feature vectors” that connect a cell or bead to a set of its nearest neighbors. A generalized feature vector deformation gradient tensor is defined that enables the use of standard kinematics to estimate the maximum likelihood matches between cells or beads in image pairs. We describe the strengths and limitations of the approach and present examples of its application