scholarly journals Cultural Diversity and African Language Education: The Role of Urbanization and Globalization

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Nyati-Saleshando
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Language Diversity ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Policy Frameworks ◽  
Long Time ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Many

<p>The African Union has been committed to the development and promotion of African languages for a long time. This is in cognizance of the fact that, language is the DNA of culture and its vehicle of expression. The Languages Plan of Action which was first adopted in 1986 and reviewed in 2006 outlines clear goals to be achieved by member states in the promotion and recognition of African languages. The Plan for all its intents and purposes has good will for the development and use of African languages in critical social domains such as education, trade, government and media. The Policy Guide on the Integration of African Languages and Cultures into the Education systems adopted in 2010 and Aspirations 3 and 5 on Agenda 2063 are clear examples of such good intentions.  On the other hand, practice continues to show very little, if any, improvement in the development and use of African languages in these critical domains. Scholars have explored several reasons why African languages continue to have low socio-economic status (Bamgbose (2011), Batibo (2013), Nyati-Ramahobo (2011), Chebanne, 2010). Globalization and urbanization have been described to be among the many factors responsible for this state of affairs. This paper aims to explore these two factors to see how they contribute to language under-utilization and the inherent loss of African languages.  Are globalization and urbanization by nature detrimental to language diversity resulting in language loss? The paper concludes that urbanization and globalization are facilitators of language and cultural diversity. However, it is policy frameworks operating on and in Africa which shape values and attitudes against the use of African languages. These policy frameworks are politically driven by multi-national corporations for economic exploitation of Africa.</p>

Review about structure and evaluation of reactivators of Acetylcholinesterase inhibited with neurotoxic organophosphorus compounds

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Daniel Figueroa-Villar ◽  
Elaine C. Petronilho ◽  
Kamil Kuca ◽  
Tanos C. C. Franca
Keyword(s):  
Organophosphorus Compounds ◽  
Chemical Warfare Agents ◽  
Nerve Impulse ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
New Agents ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Warfare Agents ◽  
Comprehensive Search ◽  
Pharmacology And Toxicology ◽  
The Many

Background: Neurotoxic chemical warfare agents can be classified as some of the most dangerous chemicals for humanity. The most effective of those agents are the organophosphates (OPs) capable of restricting the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), which in turn controls the nerve impulse transmission. When AChE is inhibited by OPs, its reactivation can be usually performed through cationic oximes. However, until today it has not been developed one universal defense agent, with complete effective reactivation activity for AChE inhibited by any of the many types of existing neurotoxic OPs. For this reason, before treating people intoxicated by an OP, it is necessary to determine the neurotoxic compound that was used for contamination, in order to select the most effective oxime. Unfortunately, this task usually requires a relative long time, raising the possibility of death. Cationic oximes also display a limited capacity of permeating the blood-brain barrier (BBB). This fact compromises their capacity of reactivating AChE inside the nervous system. Methods: We performed a comprehensive search on the data about OPs available on the scientific literature today in order to cover all the main drawbacks still faced in the research for the development of effective antidotes against those compounds. Results: Therefore, this review about neurotoxic OPs and the reactivation of AChE, provides insights for the new agents’ development. The most expected defense agent is a molecule without toxicity and effective to reactivate AChE inhibited by all neurotoxic OPs. Conclusion: To develop these new agents it is necessary the application of diverse scientific areas of research, especially theoretical procedures as computational science (computer simulation, docking and dynamics); organic synthesis; spectroscopic methodologies; biology, biochemical and biophysical information; medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and toxicology.

Articulating the Task of EU Translation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J.W. Baaij
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
Language Diversity ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Consumer Contract ◽  
Eu Legislation ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Legal Integration

The task that EU Translation needs to accomplish originates from the combined policy objectives of legal integration and language diversity, which in turn rest on two EU fundamental principles: the advancement of a European Internal Market and the respect and protection of Europe’s cultural diversity, respectively. However, a comparison of language versions of EU legislation in the field of consumer contract law illustrates the ways in which the multilingual character of EU legislation might hamper the uniform interpretation and application of EU law. It articulates why pursuing effective legal integration and protecting language diversity requires EU translators and lawyer–linguists to accomplish absolute concordance between language versions.

The Many Faces of Socioeconomic Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Toye
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Face ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
The Many ◽  
Century Development

This book provides a survey of different ways in which economic sociocultural and political aspects of human progress have been studied since the time of Adam Smith. Inevitably, over such a long time span, it has been necessary to concentrate on highlighting the most significant contributions, rather than attempting an exhaustive treatment. The aim has been to bring into focus an outline of the main long-term changes in the way that socioeconomic development has been envisaged. The argument presented is that the idea of socioeconomic development emerged with the creation of grand evolutionary sequences of social progress that were the products of Enlightenment and mid-Victorian thinkers. By the middle of the twentieth century, when interest in the accelerating development gave the topic a new impetus, its scope narrowed to a set of economically based strategies. After 1960, however, faith in such strategies began to wane, in the face of indifferent results and general faltering of confidence in economists’ boasts of scientific expertise. In the twenty-first century, development research is being pursued using a research method that generates disconnected results. As a result, it seems unlikely that any grand narrative will be created in the future and that neo-liberalism will be the last of this particular kind of socioeconomic theory.

At Nature's Edge

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Impacts ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
East African ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Road ◽  
European Experience ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Many

In an epoch when environmental issues make the headlines, this is a work that goes beyond the everyday. Ecologies as diverse as the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean coast, the Negev desert and the former military bases of Vietnam, or the Namib desert and the east African savannah all have in common a long-time human presence and the many ways people have modified nature. With research in six Asian and African countries, the authors come together to ask how and why human impacts on nature have grown in scale and pace from a long pre-history. The chapters in this volume illumine specific patterns and responses across time, going beyond an overt centring of the European experience. The tapestry of life and the human reshaping of environments evoke both concern and hope, making it vital to understand when, why, and how we came to this particular turn in the road. Eschewing easy labels and questioning eurocentrism in today’s climate vocabulary, this is a volume that will stimulate rethinking among scholars and citizens alike.

scholarly journals Applying the SDGs to Cities: Business as Usual or a New Dawn?

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 3201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Zinkernagel ◽  
James Evans ◽  
Lena Neij
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
The Many ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
The City ◽  
Indicator Sets

With growing urbanisation the sustainability of cities has become increasingly important. Although cities have been using indicators for a long time it is only in the last decades that attempts have been made to collate indicators into sets that reflect the many different aspects required to assess the sustainability of a city. The aim of this paper is to review the evolution of indicators for monitoring sustainable urban development in order to understand how ‘new’ the indicators suggested by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are for cities and the challenges they may face in using them. The review reveals that previous indicator sets emphasised environmental sustainability, health and economic growth. It is also shown that indicator sets that pre-date the SDGs lacked dimensions such as gender equality and reduced inequalities. In all, the SDG indicators provide the possibility of a more balanced and integrated approach to urban sustainability monitoring. At the same time, further research is needed to understand how to adapt the SDGs, targets and indicators to specific urban contexts. Challenges of local application include their large number, their generic characteristics and the need to complement them with specific indicators that are more relevant at the city level.

Parallel Multi-Cycle LES of an Optical Pent-Roof DISI Engine Under Motored Operating Conditions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah Van Dam ◽  
Wei Zeng ◽  
Magnus Sjöberg ◽  
Sibendu Som
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Direct Injection ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Structure Index ◽  
Number Of Cycles ◽  
The Many ◽  
Direct Injection Spark Ignition

The use of Large-eddy Simulations (LES) has increased due to their ability to resolve the turbulent fluctuations of engine flows and capture the resulting cycle-to-cycle variability. One drawback of LES, however, is the requirement to run multiple engine cycles to obtain the necessary cycle statistics for full validation. The standard method to obtain the cycles by running a single simulation through many engine cycles sequentially can take a long time to complete. Recently, a new strategy has been proposed by our research group to reduce the amount of time necessary to simulate the many engine cycles by running individual engine cycle simulations in parallel. With modern large computing systems this has the potential to reduce the amount of time necessary for a full set of simulated engine cycles to finish by up to an order of magnitude. In this paper, the Parallel Perturbation Methodology (PPM) is used to simulate up to 35 engine cycles of an optically accessible, pent-roof Direct-injection Spark-ignition (DISI) engine at two different motored engine operating conditions, one throttled and one un-throttled. Comparisons are made against corresponding sequential-cycle simulations to verify the similarity of results using either methodology. Mean results from the PPM approach are very similar to sequential-cycle results with less than 0.5% difference in pressure and a magnitude structure index (MSI) of 0.95. Differences in cycle-to-cycle variability (CCV) predictions are larger, but close to the statistical uncertainty in the measurement for the number of cycles simulated. PPM LES results were also compared against experimental data. Mean quantities such as pressure or mean velocities were typically matched to within 5–10%. Pressure CCVs were under-predicted, mostly due to the lack of any perturbations in the pressure boundary conditions between cycles. Velocity CCVs for the simulations had the same average magnitude as experiments, but the experimental data showed greater spatial variation in the root-mean-square (RMS). Conversely, circular standard deviation results showed greater repeatability of the flow directionality and swirl vortex positioning than the simulations.

The Fissility and the Integration of the City’s History Street and Building Protection - Take City Xi’an and Beijing as Examples

2012 ◽  
Vol 450-451 ◽  
pp. 960-964
Author(s):  
Tao Wang ◽  
Fei Nie ◽  
Yan Li
Keyword(s):  
Economic Status ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
City Space ◽  
Culture Integration ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Similarity And Difference ◽  
Space Order ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

City space is one of the matter forms of human civilization, so it’s space order has the same features as the change of culture(maybe there are some factors of lag).The city space order has developed from the single ethic order to the contrary syntheses of many kinds of orders. Because in the interland cities Xi’an and Beijing are both the capitals with largest history (especially they were imperial capitals for a long time in china’s history), they enjoy more notable fissility and contradictory compared with the coastal cities. The point of fissility and contradiction in these two cities is different by reason of the political, economic status and so forth. There is the fissility to some degree in the protection of the important history relic building and street, which have some similarity and difference in it. This article studies the changes of the city space order and the fissility in the protection of the history relic buildings and streets from the point of culture or in the words “humanism”. On the basis of the culture integration, the author put forward the integration of history buildings and streets protection, which would direct us reconstruct and protect our old city more reasonable.

RESEARCH ON PREMATURE INFANTS—SOME PERSPECTIVES

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-325
Author(s):  
S. Z. LEVINE
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Research ◽  
Premature Infants ◽  
West Coast ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Good Friend ◽  
The West ◽  
Clinical Research Center ◽  
Principle Investigator ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Many

THERE ARE A number of reasons why I appreciate deeply your invitation to join in these dedication exercises of the Clinical Research Center for Premature Infants. This Center for the care and study of premature infants extends to the West Coast a field of study in which I, on the East Coast, have been interested for many years. Equally gratifying is the circumstance that it will have Dr. Norman Kretchmer, my long-time colleague and good friend, as its Principle Investigator; and Dr. Sumner Yaffe, his distinguished associate, as its first Program Director. Under their direction and with a team of competent workers, with splendid facilities and an adequate budget, we are assured of imaginative exploration and new approaches to the many unknowns still awaiting solution.

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