Language, literacy, and funds of knowledge: Somali refugee women in Clarkston, Georgia

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Somali refugee women experience language and literacy in their community of Clarkston, Georgia, and to identify their funds of knowledge (Gonzales, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), or unseen practices. The aim of this investigation is to strengthen and challenge their current modes of language socialization and to combat negative discourses that represent them as ‘vulnerable victims and cunning crooks’ (Horst, 2006). Clarkston, Georgia was chosen by private resettlement agencies as a refugee resettlement site in the early 1990s. In Clarkston, although there are several refugee serving agencies that focus on refugee education and integration, many Somali refugee women are still facing obstacles during the process of language socialization. In order to investigate the language socialization of Somali refugee women, a holistic case study was conducted. Participants included five Somali refugee women who were affiliated with one specific community of practice, a Somali-ethnic based community organization for refugees. Data collection involved my participant observation and field notes, interviews with the participants, and photographic documentation of the linguistic landscape (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) in Clarkston. Findings reveal the diverse language and literacy practices and language socialization pathways among participants, and shed light on some of the barriers to language socialization, including gender-based ideologies and textually-mediated social interactions, as well as some of the successful strategies they have used. In addition, the case of one exceptional Somali refugee woman, Mama Rita, presents funds of knowledge that may help enhance the language socialization of Somali refugee women and help to understand citizenship as practice rather than status

La prise en compte de l'investissement immatériel - Cas d'expérimentations.

L'objet de cet article est de montrer les enjeux qui se rapportent à la prise en compte des investissements immatériels, notamment pour les entreprises industrielles. Après avoir rappelé quelques éléments de définition et détaillé les principaux référents théoriques qui établissent l'importance stratégique des investissements immatériels, l'article propose, sur la base des résultats de deux cas d'expérimentations réalisées dans des entreprises industrielles, de mettre en évidence la sous-évaluation des investissements immatériels et la nécessité de leur prise en compte.investissement immatériel

Strong light-matter coupling in ultrathin double dielectric mirror GaN microcavities

Strong light-matter coupling is demonstrated at low temperature in an ultrathin GaN microcavity fabricated using two silica/zirconia Bragg mirrors, in addition to a three-period epitaxial (Al,Ga)N mirror serving as an etch stop and assuring good quality of the overgrown GaN. The λ/2 cavity is grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a Si substrate. Analysis of angle-resolved data reveal key features of the strong coupling regime in both reflectivity and transmission spectra at 5 K: anticrossing with a normal mode splitting of 43±2 meV and 56±2 meV for reflectivity and transmission, respectively, and narrowing of the lower polariton linewidth near resonance

Trends and Anti-Trends in Techno-Art Scholarship: The Legacy of the Arts “Machine” Special Issues

With the goal of casting a spotlight on the posture of the creative community at this crucial moment in human technological history, we present herein a thematic overview of the 23 articles published in the recent Arts Special Issues “The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)” and “The Machine as Artist (for the 21st Century)”. Surprisingly, several of the themes that had been suggested in our two introductory essays as representing shared and positive points of departure—in particular, (a) the visual arts as a longstanding touchstone of human culture, (b) the visual arts (with the example of John James Audubon) as having a unique ability to rally the public to the environmental cause, and (c) computer and robotic proficiency in the arts as leading to a friendlier artificial intelligence—received less than the expected amount of attention. Instead, it was another of the suggested themes (albeit also of a positive and forward-looking nature) around which our authors coalesced, as expressed in the following phrase: the “vast expansion of the creative sphere” which technology has made possible, or in other words, the idea that technology is not only providing new horizons for the professional artist but is also providing new avenues for the non-professional to discover his or her creative potential. In light, furthermore, of the marked enthusiasm for this theme, we suggest in our conclusion the need for a corresponding expansion of the venues available to both professional and non-professional techno-art practitioners

Amplifying The Uncanny

Deep neural networks have become remarkably good at producing realistic deepfakes, images of people that (to the untrained eye) are indistinguishable from real images. Deepfakes are produced by algorithms that learn to distinguish between real and fake images and are optimised to generate samples that the system deems realistic. This paper, and the resulting series of artworks Being Foiled explore the aesthetic outcome of inverting this process, instead optimising the system to generate images that it predicts as being fake. This maximises the unlikelihood of the data and in turn, amplifies the uncanny nature of these machine hallucinations

Towards Friendly Mixed Initiative Procedural Content Generation: Three Pillars of Industry

While the games industry is moving towards procedural content generation (PCG) with tools available under popular platforms such as Unreal, Unity or Houdini, and video game titles like No Man’s Sky and Horizon Zero Dawn taking advantage ofPCG, the gap between academia and industry is as wide as it has ever been, in terms of communication and sharing methods. One of the authors, has worked on both sides of this gap and in an effort to shorten it and increase the synergy between the two sectors, has identified three design pillars for PCG using mixed-initiative interfaces. The three pillars are Respect Designer Control, Respect the Creative Process and Respect Existing Work Processes. Respecting designer control is about creating a tool that gives enough control to bring out the designer’s vision. Respecting the creative process concerns itself with having a feedback loop that is short enough, that the creative process is not disturbed. Respecting existing work processes means that a PCG tool should plug in easily to existing asset pipelines. As academics and communicators, it is surprising that publications often do not describe ways for developers to use our work or lack considerations for how a piece ofwork might fit into existing content pipelines

A Machine Learning Application Based on Giorgio Morandi Still-Life Paintings to Assist Artists in the Choice of 3D Compositions

The authors present a system built to generate arrangements of threedimensional models for aesthetic evaluation, with the aim being to support an artist in their creative process. The authors explore how this system can automatically generate aesthetically pleasing content for use in the media and design industry, based on standards originally developed in master artworks. They then demonstrate the effectiveness of their process in the context of paintings using a collection of images inspired by the work of the artist Giorgio Morandi (Bologna, 1890–1964). Finally, they compare the results of their system with the results of a well-known Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)

A complete FE simulation tools for NDT inspections with piezoelectric transducers

International audienceAn ultrasonic inspection system involves the generation, propagation and reception of short transient signals. Piezoelectric transducers and particularly phased arrays are increasingly used in ultrasonic Non Destructive Testing (NDT) because of their ability to focus or deflect an ultrasonic beam in parts of complex geometries. To accurately model the sensitivity in transmission and reception of such sensors, a transient Finite Element (FE) model has been developed including not only piezoelectric effects but also all electrical elements such as pulser/receiver system and cabling. A particular attention is devoted to the different boundary conditions used to model the emission and reception regimes of the sensor. The definition of the inspection domain is made easier by a decomposition domain technique allowing, in the same time, local time stepping and efficient absorbing layers to optimize calculation cost. In order to illustrate all the capabilities of this simulation tool, several cases of NDT inspections are then presented through the analysis of the ultrasonic beam snapshots and the electrical signal read on the receiver

The Effect of Spatial Design on User Memory Performance Using the Method of Loci in VR

Based on the Method of Loci, the following experiment compares the effect of two different virtual environments on participants' memory performance. The primary task consists of remembering a sequence of random playing cards. Each virtual environment is based on a different architectural style with a different layout. One is inspired by a Palladian style architecture, and the other by a Modern curved architecture