LANGUAGE CREATIVITY: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC READING OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE IN LEBANON

Language creativity in incorporated in everyday conversations and language behaviour. It is present in everyday expression although it might sometimes be invisible, looked down on or disdained. Regardless of whether we are in favour of or against this creativity, it is worth being recognised. As far as Lebanon is concerned, Arabic (i.e. Standard Arabic) is the official language, while Lebanese Arabic, along with English and French, are the main languages used by the Lebanese. This language diversity can be explained in the light of a number of factors and sociolinguistic functions. The language use in Lebanon has many creative aspects such as nativization, code switching, word coinage, Arabizi and transliteration. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the creative innovations introduced by the speakers to meet the needs of the speech community and to fulfil certain sociolinguistic functions in a variety of domains

THE EIGHT GRIDS: A NEW METHOD TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ SKETCHING SKILLS IN THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE

Sketching is one of the required courses for architecture and design students in higher education since it is considered a necessary skill for architects and designers. However, the lack of visualization skills and practice, students were met with difficulties in grasping the complex concepts of this course, concurrent with the teachers’ lack of familiarity with the various methods. The aim of this paper is to find a new method that allows students to carry out their sketches by examining the problems faced by first-year undergraduate students at the Faculty of Architecture, Design & Built Environment in BAU, Lebanon. To achieve the research aim, a qualitative research methodology is used among subjects involving 120 first-level architecture students with poor visualization abilities in general and is considered to be the key reason that affects the success of students in sketching. These students were tested before beginning the course, during, and after a year of practicing. Sixty students got the method before they began studying the lesson, while the remaining sixty students studied the course without this method. They were then tested after finishing the course, where the method was found to help students grasp perspective more easily, which was favorably mirrored in the student sketching exercise

Land-Rich Economies, Education and Economic Development

We analyze the emergence of large-scale education systems in a framework where growth is associated with changes in the conguration of the economy. We model the incentives that the economic elite could have (collectively) to accept taxation destined to nance the education of credit-constrained workers. Contrary to previous work, in our model this incentive does not necessarily arise from a complementarity between physical and human capital in manufacturing. Instead, we emphasize the demand for human-capital-intensive services by highincome groups. Our model seems capable to account for salient features of the development of Latin America in the 19th century, where, in particular, land-rich countries such as Argentina established an extensive public education system and developed a sophisticated service sector before starting signicant manufacturing activities.

Anytime Coalition Structure Generation with Worst Case Guarantees

Coalition formation is a key topic in multiagent systems. One would prefer a coalition structure that maximizes the sum of the values of the coalitions, but often the number of coalition structures is too large to allow exhaustive search for the optimal one. But then, can the coalition structure found via a partial search be guaranteed to be within a bound from optimum? We show that none of the previous coalition structure generation algorithms can establish any bound because they search fewer nodes than a threshold that we show necessary for establishing a bound. We present an algorithm that establishes a tight bound within this minimal amount of search, and show that any other algorithm would have to search strictly more. The fraction of nodes needed to be searched approaches zero as the number of agents grows. If additional time remains, our anytime algorithm searches further, and establishes a progressively lower tight bound. Surprisingly, just searching one more node drops the bound in half. As desired, our algorithm lowers the bound rapidly early on, and exhibits diminishing returns to computation. It also drastically outperforms its obvious contenders. Finally, we show how to distribute the desired search across self-interested manipulative agents

A durabilidade da cultura bizantina e do simbolismo na Igreja Ortodoxa Oriental

The architectural style of the Eastern Orthodox Church temples in the twentieth century, in most countries that were under the Byzantine Empire, has had minor changes since the fall of the Empire. Orthodoxy is traditional for several reasons, one of which is that it is founded on Tradition. Between the Byzantine Rite and the elements- mostly architectural- there is no simple, clear, and direct correspondence. It is quite impossible to understand the rationale behind the liturgy, arts, and architecture, without a historical context of the Church.  Both liturgy and architecture have “an internal logic”, and their development is at different rates. The relationship between the Byzantine Rite and architecture goes through the Orthodox Church along with the meaning of the Byzantine Empire for the Church. The Byzantine architectural style of the churches is dynamic and had a lot of development during the time of the Empire. The use of this style by the Orthodox Church in the twentieth century is related to a complex matrix that starts with Tradition and goes through the prosperity that the Empire gave the Church in the first centuries.A linguagem e tipologia arquitetónicas da Igreja Ortodoxa Calcedoniana no século XX, na maioria dos países que faziam parte do Império Bizantino, sofreram apenas pequenas mudanças, desde a queda do Império. Várias razões concorrem para este fenómeno, nomeadamente o facto da ortodoxia possuir um forte sentido da Tradição que acentua a continuidade nas suas opções doutrinais (incluindo o Rito Bizantino) e arquitetónicas.A correspondência estilística, isto é, “a lógica interna” que liga os elementos – sobretudo arquitetónicos – não é imediatamente percetível sem recorrer a uma contextualização dos fatores históricos, especialmente os relacionados com o Império Bizantino. Por exemplo, a liturgia e a arquitetura estão intimamente ligadas, mas desenvolveram-se a ritmos diferentes. Ora, a adoção desse estilo pela Igreja Ortodoxa em pleno século XX pode ser apreciada como indexada a uma matriz complexa da Tradição com fortes influências dos momentos altos da cultura bizantina na vida primitiva desta Igreja