Ritual in intercultural contact: a case study of heckling

The present paper examines how interpersonal ritual notions are appropriated in intercultural contact, hence filling a knowledge gap in intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics. As a case study, we examine how the English metalexeme ‘heckling’ has been appropriated in Chinese and Japanese cultures. We argue that the history and pragmatic features of native heckling metalexemes in Chinese and Japanese strongly influence the way in which English ‘heckling’ has been incorporated into these cultures. By studying the relationship between intercultural appropriation and metalexical history, we aim to draw attention to the importance of examining culture-specific metalexemes in intercultural research on rituals and other interpersonal pragmatic phenomena

Public ritual apology – A case study of Chinese

Abstract The present paper explores the phenomenon of ‘public ritual apology’. In our definition, this phenomenon covers an apology performed in front of public, and which is ritual in the sense that it is symbolic and expected to restore the moral order of the public, rather than grant actual reconciliation between the apologiser and the offended party. Thus, ‘public ritual apology’ usually occurs in contexts when someone apologises for acts that are deemed as grave and in the case of which apology is seemingly dysfunctional in the sense that it cannot usually grant forgiveness. Public ritual apology is a regretfully neglected area, in spite of the fact that such apologies are not only frequent but also generate significant public attention in media – thus, this paper fills an important knowledge gap. In our paper we focus on Chinese public ritual apologies, which are noteworthy to explore as Chinese is stereotypically referred to as a culture which disprefers apologising behaviour. Our methodology is predominantly interactional and metapragmatic, and it combines qualitative research with quantitative elements

Public ritual apology – A case study of Chinese

Abstract The present paper explores the phenomenon of ‘public ritual apology’. In our definition, this phenomenon covers an apology performed in front of public, and which is ritual in the sense that it is symbolic and expected to restore the moral order of the public, rather than grant actual reconciliation between the apologiser and the offended party. Thus, ‘public ritual apology’ usually occurs in contexts when someone apologises for acts that are deemed as grave and in the case of which apology is seemingly dysfunctional in the sense that it cannot usually grant forgiveness. Public ritual apology is a regretfully neglected area, in spite of the fact that such apologies are not only frequent but also generate significant public attention in media – thus, this paper fills an important knowledge gap. In our paper we focus on Chinese public ritual apologies, which are noteworthy to explore as Chinese is stereotypically referred to as a culture which disprefers apologising behaviour. Our methodology is predominantly interactional and metapragmatic, and it combines qualitative research with quantitative elements

Methods for Repair Based Scheduling

An important practical problem in schedule execution is the occurrence of unforeseen events. Whether we consider a schedule for a Job Shop or a timetable for a school, an unexpected event, such as machine breakdowns or personnel illness, that disrupt the execution of the schedule will almost certainly occur once in a while. Hence, it becomes important to be able to repair a schedule. When repairing a schedule, it is often important to minimise the difference between the new and the original schedule. Since this minimisation objective is a global objective involving the start times of all operations, repair-based scheduling is much harder than predictive scheduling, i.e., creating an schedule from scratch. In this paper, a new constraint-based scheduling approach for repairing a schedule is proposed. This approach aims at repairing standard Job Shop Scheduling Problems. The approach contains a new constraint-propagation method and a new operation selection heuristic.

Proceedings CPAIOR’02 Approaches to Find a Near-minimal Change Solution for Dynamic CSPs

A Dynamic Constraint Satisfaction Problem (DCSP) is a sequence of static CSPs that are formed by constraint changes. In this sequence, the solution of one CSP may be invalidated by one or more constraint changes. To find a minimal change solution for that CSP with respect to the solution of the previous related CSP, a Repair-Based algorithm with Arc-Consistency (denoted as RB-AC in [4]) has been developed. However, when a new CSP is formed by adding or changing several n-ary (n ≥ 2) constraints, using RB-AC to find a minimal change solution is much harder than using a constructive algorithm to generate an arbitrary solution from scratch. The constraint propagation techniques integrated in RB-AC do not reduce its time complexity. This paper proposes two approximate algorithms to reduce the time complexity of RB-AC by relaxing the criteria of an optimal solution. The experimental results show that one of the proposed algorithms performs quite well in terms of approximation of a minimal change solution within a limited period of time

A Review of Super-High-Temperature Heat Pumps over 100 °C

The high-temperature heat pump, as a low-carbonization technology, has broad application prospects in replacing boiler heating, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and improving the energy utilization efficiency. In this paper, the working fluid, cycle process, key equipment (compressor), and application scenarios of high-temperature heat pumps are introduced in detail. Firstly, the research direction of the working fluid is introduced and the existing working fluid substitution is analyzed and summarized. Then, the characteristics of different heat pump cycles such as compression, absorption, and hybrid heat pumps are introduced. In the aspect of key equipment, the application range and research status of different types of compressors are emphatically introduced. Finally, the application scenario of high-temperature heat pumps is prospected. In addition to the application of industrial heating, it is often used for heat storage to improve the regulatory characteristics of the system. The new heat pump electricity storage system has great application potential in the field of renewable energy consumption. Based on the above analysis of high-temperature heat pumps, four development prospects are put forward: low-Global-Warming-Potential (GWP) working fluid; cycles of temperature lift greater than 80 °C; a compressor with better high-temperature performance; and circulation characteristics of heat pump electricity storage

A Method of Multiple Dynamic Objects Identification and Localization Based on Laser and RFID

In an indoor environment, object identification and localization are paramount for human-object interaction. Visual or laser-based sensors can achieve the identification and localization of the object based on its appearance, but these approaches are computationally expensive and not robust against the environment with obstacles. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has a unique tag ID to identify the object, but it cannot accurately locate it. Therefore, in this paper, the data of RFID and laser range finder are fused for the better identification and localization of multiple dynamic objects in an indoor environment. The main method is to use the laser range finder to estimate the radial velocities of objects in a certain environment, and match them with the object’s radial velocities estimated by the RFID phase. The method also uses a fixed time series as “sliding time window” to find the cluster with the highest similarity of each RFID tag in each window. Moreover, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) is used in the update stage of the particle filter (PF) to estimate the moving path of each cluster in order to improve the accuracy in a complex environment with obstacles. The experiments were verified by a SCITOS G5 robot. The results show that this method can achieve an matching rate of 90.18% and a localization accuracy of 0.33m in an environment with the presence of obstacles. This method effectively improves the matching rate and localization accuracy of multiple objects in indoor scenes when compared to the Bray-Curtis (BC) similarity matching-based approach as well as the particle filter-based approach

Isolation and characterization of two kinds of stem cells from the same human skin back sample with therapeutic potential in spinal cord injury.

BACKGROUNDS AND OBJECTIVE: Spinal cord injury remains to be a challenge to clinicians and it is attractive to employ autologous adult stem cell transplantation in its treatment, however, how to harvest cells with therapeutic potential easily and how to get enough number of cells for transplantation are challenging issues. In the present study, we aimed to isolate skin-derived precursors (SKPs) and dermal multipotent stem cells (dMSCs) simultaneously from single human skin samples from patients with paraplegia. METHODS: Dissociated cells were initially generated from the dermal layer of skin samples from patients with paraplegia and cultured in SKPs proliferation medium. Four hours later, many cells adhered to the base of the flask. The suspended cells were then transferred to another flask for further culture as SKPs, while the adherent cells were cultured in dMSCs proliferation medium. Twenty-four hours later, the adherent cells were harvested and single-cell colonies were generated using serial dilution method. [(3)H]thymidine incorporation assay, microchemotaxis Transwell chambers assay, RT-PCR and fluorescent immunocytochemistry were employed to examine the characterizations of the isolated cells. RESULTS: SKPs and dMSCs were isolated simultaneously from a single skin sample. SKPs and dMSCs differed in several respects, including in terms of intermediate protein expression, proliferation capacities, and differentiation tendencies towards mesodermal and neural progenies. However, both SKPs and dMSCs showed high rates of differentiation into neurons and Schwann cells under appropriate inducing conditions. dMSCs isolated by this method showed no overt differences from dMSCs isolated by routine methods. CONCLUSIONS: Two kinds of stem cells, namely SKPs and dMSCs, can be isolated simultaneously from individual human skin sample from paraplegia patients. Both of them show ability to differentiate into neural cells under proper inducing conditions, indicating their potential for the treatment of spinal cord injury patients by autologous cell transplantation