Exploring digital interactivity: a multimodal and social semiotic approach to intersemiotic construction in COVID China website

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Shi
Keyword(s):  
Action Potentials ◽  
Functional Model ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
And Control ◽  
Meaning Representation

Abstract This paper explores intersemiotic construction and digital interactivity through a multimodal social semiotic lens examining the semiotic instantiations of interactive signs on the homepage of “Fighting COVID-19 the Chinese Way” (covid-19.chinadaily.com.cn), a website created to disseminate information on news and development of COVID prevention and control practices in China to contribute to global efforts to fight the pandemic. The study focuses on how digital interactivity is afforded by the COVID China website, where the interactive signs are ideationally and compositionally constructed for meaning representation and interpersonally for text-viewer relation construal. From the multimodal social semiotic perspective, systemic functional model-based cluster and intersemiotic analyses are applied to explore the visual, spatial, and linguistic features that contribute to the design and construction of interactive semiotic signs on the COVID China website and afford digital interactivity for viewers’ action potentials. This study extends the analytical focus to the semiotic instantiations of interactive signs and their intersemiotic construction process that stimulate the enabling of interactivity, instead of the interactivity per se, and demonstrates how different semiotic instantiations of interactive signs are featured and interact to afford digital interactivity. It argues for an integrated lens in analysis to look at the interactive signs not only as signs of action with action-enabling forms but also as signs of meanings that afford user-page interactivity.

Visual affect in films: a semiotic approach

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (239) ◽  
pp. 99-124
Author(s):  
Yi Jing
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Meaning Potential ◽  
Action Film ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
Live Action

Abstract This study investigates affective meanings expressed in facial expressions and bodily gestures from a semiotic perspective. Particularly, the study focuses on disentangling relations of affective meanings and exploring the meaning potential of facial expressions and bodily gestures. Based on the analysis of over three hundred screenshots from two films (one animation and one live-action film), this study proposes a system of visual affect, as well as a system of visual resources involved in the expression of visual affect. The system of visual affect makes a further step in the investigation of affective meanings afforded by facial expressions and bodily gestures, and can provide methodological insights into the examination of affective meanings expressed visually. The system of visual resources provides a more meaning-motivated framework for systematic tracking of the visual resources, which may be applied to the analysis of other visual media apart from films.

Individuality, self and sociality of vascular plants

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1821) ◽  
pp. 20190760 ◽  
Author(s):  
František Baluška ◽  
Stefano Mancuso
Keyword(s):  
Action Potentials ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Flowering Plants ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
Seed Dispersers ◽  
And Control

Vascular plants are integrated into coherent bodies via plant-specific synaptic adhesion domains, action potentials (APs) and other means of long-distance signalling running throughout the plant bodies. Plant-specific synapses and APs are proposed to allow plants to generate their self identities having unique ways of sensing and acting as agents with their own goals guiding their future activities. Plants move their organs with a purpose and with obvious awareness of their surroundings and require APs to perform and control these movements. Self-identities allow vascular plants to act as individuals enjoying sociality via their self/non-self-recognition and kin recognition. Flowering plants emerge as cognitive and intelligent organisms when the major strategy is to attract and control their animal pollinators as well as seed dispersers by providing them with food enriched with nutritive and manipulative/addictive compounds. Their goal in interactions with animals is manipulation for reproduction, dispersal and defence. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Basal cognition: multicellularity, neurons and the cognitive lens’.

Engineering Planning and Management Control in High-Rise Building Construction

2012 ◽  
Vol 193-194 ◽  
pp. 1257-1260
Author(s):  
Min Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Management Control ◽  
Building Construction ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
High Rise ◽  
High Rise Building ◽  
Planning And Control ◽  
Flexible Modeling ◽  
Planning And Management ◽  
And Control ◽  
Different Levels

Various challenges should be considered in the development of an effective model for the planning and control of high-rise building construction. These challenges have been identified as results of the construction process. This paper discusses the engineering planning and management control in high-rise building construction. The methodology should also be able to address the concerns and considerations regularly faced in the industry and thus providing flexible modeling, which can be used by different levels of management

scholarly journals Discharge Properties of MST Neurons That Project to the Frontal Pursuit Area in Macaque Monkeys

2005 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 1084-1090 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne K. Churchland ◽  
Stephen G. Lisberger
Keyword(s):  
Optic Flow ◽  
Action Potentials ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Image Motion ◽  
Antidromic Activation ◽  
Medial Superior Temporal ◽  
Mst Neurons ◽  
Direction Tuning ◽  
And Control

We have used antidromic activation to determine the functional discharge properties of neurons that project to the frontal pursuit area (FPA) from the medial-superior temporal visual area (MST). In awake rhesus monkeys, MST neurons were considered to be activated antidromically if they emitted action potentials at fixed, short latencies after stimulation in the FPA and if the activation passed the collision test. Antidromically activated neurons ( n = 37) and a sample of the overall population of MST neurons ( n = 110) then were studied during pursuit eye movements across a dark background and during laminar motion of a large random-dot texture and optic flow expansion and contraction during fixation. Antidromically activated neurons showed direction tuning during pursuit (25/37), during laminar image motion (21/37), or both (16/37). Of 27 neurons tested with optic flow stimuli, 14 showed tuning for optic flow expansion ( n = 10) or contraction ( n = 4). There were no statistically significant differences in the response properties of the antidromically activated and control samples. Preferred directions for pursuit and laminar image motion did not show any statistically significant biases, and the preferred directions for eye versus image motion in each sample tended to be equally divided between aligned and opposed. There were small differences between the control and antidromically activated populations in preferred speeds for laminar motion and optic flow; these might have reached statistical significance with larger samples of antidromically activated neurons. We conclude that the population of MST neurons projecting to the FPA is highly diverse and quite similar to the general population of neurons in MST.

scholarly journals Creativity and Control: A Paradox—Evidence from the Levers of Control Framework

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland F. Speklé ◽  
Hilco J. van Elten ◽  
Sally K. Widener
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Structural Equation Model ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Organizational Success ◽  
Business Unit ◽  
Control Framework ◽  
Per Se ◽  
And Control ◽  
Levers Of Control

ABSTRACT Both control and creativity are important drivers of organizational success (Gilson, Mathieu, Shalley, and Ruddy 2005; Hirst, van Knippenberg, Chen, and Sacramento 2011). However, they are often regarded as conflicting. We use the Levers of Control (LoC) framework to examine the relationships between a system of controls, empowerment, and creativity. Using survey data from 233 business unit managers, a structural equation model shows that the intensity of use of a LoC system of controls is positively associated with both empowerment and creativity. This suggests that the LoC system provides an environment that is rich with information and motivates employees to take action in purposeful, directed ways. This environment facilitates employees' perception that they have the ability to take actions, make decisions, and produce novel ideas. We conclude that there is not a conflict between control and creativity per se. Rather, paradoxically, creativity can flourish in the presence of control.

The heroes of the pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 07 (01) ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Sebastian Moreno Barreneche
Keyword(s):  
Health Economics ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Economics And Politics

Besides its impact on health, economics, and politics, the COVID-19 pandemic was the source of phenomena of a discursive nature, specifically regarding the solutions found by societies to make sense of the crisis caused by the uncontrolled spread of the virus. This article analyzes from a socio-semiotic perspective the construction process of the collective identity of “the healthcare workers” during the pandemic. After generally introducing semiotics as the discipline interested in meaning-making and signification, the article studies four semiotic mechanisms present in the discursive construction of any collective identity. It then moves on to its main goal: the analysis of the functioning of those four mechanisms in the specific case of “the healthcare workers,” a collective identity that, since the beginning of 2020, has been central in the narratives that emerged around the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, it should render visible the semiotic mechanisms of segmentation, actorialization, generalization, and axiologization.

State approaches to non-state interactions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Y. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region ◽  
Almost All ◽  
And Control

The chapter focuses on cross-border relations between the Republic of Kazakhstan and Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, examining the attempts of respective states to intervene in and/or co-opt long-established traditions of transborder flows. Despite having existed on opposite sides of closely guarded borders for most of the 20th century, the two adjoining regions managed to keep alive long-established traditions of cross-border interactions thanks to shared ethnic, cultural, and linguistic features. The frontier societies there today have lived through multiple challenges – the indiscriminate border policy of the Soviet era on Kazakhstan’s side and the tumultuous early years of socialist China engendered exoduses of people across semi-controlled borders. Almost all official interactions stopped until the 1990s when new challenges and opportunities presented themselves and, with them, the revival of informal cross-border exchanges and states’ attempts to co-opt and control them.

Responses of Deep Entorhinal Cortex are Epileptiform in an Electrogenic Rat Model of Chronic Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

1998 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 230-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan B. Fountain ◽  
Jonathan Bear ◽  
Edward H. Bertram ◽  
Eric W. Lothman
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy ◽  
Entorhinal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Rat Model ◽  
Action Potentials ◽  
Nmda Antagonist ◽  
Target Cells ◽  
Excitatory Postsynaptic Potential ◽  
Inhibitory Interneurons ◽  
And Control

Fountain, Nathan B., Jonathan Bear, Edward H. Bertram III, and Eric W. Lothman. Responses of deep entorhinal cortex are epileptiform in an electrogenic rat model of chronic temporal lobe epilepsy. J. Neurophysiol. 80: 230–240, 1998. We investigated whether entorhinal cortex (EC) layer IV neurons are hyperexcitable in the post-selfsustaining limbic status epilepticus (post-SSLSE) animal model of temporal lobe epilepsy. We studied naive rats ( n = 44), epileptic rats that had experienced SSLSE resulting in spontaneous seizures ( n = 45), and electrode controls ( n = 7). There were no differences between electrode control and naive groups, which were pooled into a single control group. Intracellular and extracellular recordings were made from deep layers of EC, targeting layer IV, which was activated by stimulation of the superficial layers of EC or the angular bundle. There were no differences between epileptic and control neurons in basic cellular characteristics, and all neurons were quiescent under resting conditions. In control tissue, 77% of evoked intracellular responses consisted of a short-duration [8.6 ± 1.3 (SE) ms] excitatory postsynaptic potential and a single action potential followed by γ-aminobutyric acid-A (GABAA) and GABAB inhibitory post synaptic potentials (IPSPs). Ten percent of controls did not contain IPSPs. In chronically epileptic tissue, evoked intracellular responses demonstrated prolonged depolarizing potentials (256 ± 39 ms), multiple action potentials (13 ± 4), and no IPSPs. Ten percent of epileptic responses were followed by rhythmic “clonic” depolarizations. Epileptic responses exhibited an all-or-none response to progressive increases in stimulus intensity and required less stimulation to elicit action potentials. In both epileptic and control animals, intracellular responses correlated precisely in morphology and duration with extracellular field potentials. Severing the hippocampus from the EC did not alter the responses. Duration of intracellular epileptic responses was reduced 22% by the N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist d(−)-2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid (APV), but they did not return to normal and IPSPs were not restored. Epileptic and control responses were abolished by the non-NMDA antagonist 6,7-dinitroquinoxaline-2-3-dione (DNQX). A monosynaptic IPSP protocol was used to test connectivity of inhibitory interneurons to primary cells by direct activation of interneurons with a stimulating electrode placed near the recording electrode in the presence of APV and DNQX. Using this protocol, IPSPs similar to control ( P > 0.05) were seen in epileptic cells. The findings demonstrate that deep layer EC cells are hyperexcitable or “epileptiform” in this model. Hyperexcitability is not due to interactions with the hippocampus. It is due partially to augmented NMDA-mediated excitation. The lack of IPSPs in epileptic neurons may suggest inhibition is impaired, but we found evidence that inhibitory interneurons are connected to their target cells and are capable of inducing IPSPs.

Comparison of gene expression of 2-mo denervated, 2-mo stimulated-denervated, and control rat skeletal muscles

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Y. Kostrominova ◽  
Douglas E. Dow ◽  
Robert G. Dennis ◽  
Richard A. Miller ◽  
John A. Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Electrical Stimulation ◽  
Mrna Expression ◽  
Action Potentials ◽  
Skeletal Muscles ◽  
Microarray Study ◽  
Number Of Genes ◽  
Denervated Muscles ◽  
And Control ◽  
Stimulation Of

Loss of innervation in skeletal muscles leads to degeneration, atrophy, and loss of force. These dramatic changes are reflected in modifications of the mRNA expression of a large number of genes. Our goal was to clarify the broad spectrum of molecular events associated with long-term denervation of skeletal muscles. A microarray study compared gene expression profiles of 2-mo denervated and control extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles from 6-mo-old rats. The study identified 121 genes with increased and 7 genes with decreased mRNA expression. The expression of 107 of these genes had not been identified previously as changed after denervation. Many of the genes identified were genes that are highly expressed in skeletal muscles during embryonic development, downregulated in adults, and upregulated after denervation of muscle fibers. Electrical stimulation of denervated muscles preserved muscle mass and maximal force at levels similar to those in the control muscles. To understand the processes underlying the effect of electrical stimulation on denervated skeletal muscles, mRNA and protein expression of a number of genes, identified by the microarray study, was compared. The hypothesis was that loss of nerve action potentials and muscle contractions after denervation play the major roles in upregulation of gene expression in skeletal muscles. With electrical stimulation of denervated muscles, the expression levels for these genes were significantly downregulated, consistent with the hypothesis that loss of action potentials and/or contractions contribute to the alterations in gene expression in denervated skeletal muscles.

Functionalities of Construction Process Management Software

2015 ◽  
Vol 795 ◽  
pp. 142-148
Author(s):  
Monika Łobaziewicz
Keyword(s):  
Cost Estimation ◽  
Process Management ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Building Site ◽  
Efficient System ◽  
Erp System ◽  
Construction Companies ◽  
And Control

A dynamic development of IT applications automating external processes based on a B2B model refers to a variety of enterprises, including construction companies. Due to the high variability of data during the construction processes performance and the need of a continuous data bases supplied with current data, construction companies expect a good, multifunctional and efficient system - a B2B platform that supports the exchange of data between the ERP system, perceived as an operational layer, and modules responsible for the design, cost estimation, monitoring and control of construction processes implemented in the headquarters and directly on the building site, including the cooperation with subcontractors. The main aim of this article is to present the results of research focused on software functionalities currently available on the market which support a construction process. Ultimately, the results will be used to identify functional gaps in existing software for the construction industry. Then, the functional architecture will be designed containing standard and specialized components that will be the basis for the creation of B2B system OPTIbud.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document