Computer Intelligent Comprehensive Rapid Risk Assessment System of Barrier Dam by Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and Big Data

Barrier dam overall stability and dam break influence degree are the two risks. In order to comprehensively and quickly evaluate the risk of barrier dams, the dam height, the capacity of the barrier lake and the material composition of the dam body are selected as the stability evaluation indexes; the dam failure degree and the risk population and the potential economic loss are taken as the evaluation indexes. Based on the fuzzy hierarchy theory, this comprehensive and rapid risk assessment system of barrier dam is obtained, which is clear, intuitive and rapid, combining qualitative indexes and quantitative indexes.

Research on the Construction of Value Evaluation Model of Pragmatic Function of Spoken English Discourse Markers Under the Perspective of Smoking Cessation Discourse

In view of the needs of the use of spoken English discourse markers in different situations under cross-cultural communication, it is necessary to standardize the language use of communicators and give full play to the pragmatic value of spoken English discourse markers. By establishing the pragmatic function evaluation model of spoken English discourse markers in the context of smoking cessation and tobacco control from the perspective of smoking cessation discourse, English communicative conversation in the context of smoking cessation and tobacco control is studied in this paper. Based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and starting from four layers including the target layer, criterion layer, index layer and scheme layer, this paper designs an evaluation model of pragmatic functional value of spoken English discourse markers from the perspective of smoking cessation discourse through hierarchy theory model construction, judgment matrix construction, hierarchical single ranking and consistency test, hierarchical total ranking and consistency test. The model is used in the context of communication, language training and language assessment. The model is suitable for simulating communicative behavior, language ability training and language ability assessment in smoking cessation and tobacco control scenarios. It can improve the accuracy of the use of discourse markers, facilitate the reasonable choice of discourse markers in special communication scenarios, ensure the efficiency of English communication, and highlight the unique value of discourse markers in different communication scenarios.

The Anti-pornography Civil Rights Ordinances, 1983–1991

The chapter analyzes attempted civil rights legislation against pornography (the “MacKinnon-Dworkin” ordinance). It delineates its underlying hierarchy theory: consciousness-raising, group representation, and intersectional legal analysis—a commanding approach to end oppression through civil lawsuits against producers and disseminators, avoiding criminal law. The contemporaneous critics’ charges of “rigidity” and “one-sidedness” are found wanting, inadequately apprehending hierarchy and subordination. The ordinances’ definitions are shown to target provably harmful material only, preventing overbreadth and vagueness. A legal argument is advanced that the ordinances are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest, the incidental restrictions on alleged First Amendment freedoms are no greater than is essential to further their interest, and the definitions are sufficiently analogous to other unprotected expressions (e.g., obscenity and group libel). The Seventh Circuit’s judicial invalidation in American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut (1985) is found based on ideology rather than law, political ideas rather than legislated rules.

On the Cognitive Statuses of Sasak Demonstratives

This study examines the cognitive statuses of the Givenness Hierarchy on Sasak demonstratives, particularly in Menu-Meni dialect of the Sasak language. This study is qualitative research in nature. The data were collected via the field-linguistic method by utilizing three techniques: elicitation, semi-structured interview and intuition. The results of the study revealed that Menu-Meni dialect implements the pronominal demonstrative for “activated” status and adnominal demonstratives are used for the status of “referential”, “uniquely identifiable”, and “familiar”. Beyond demonstratives, zero articles is applied in the status of “type identifiable” and the pronoun ie (it/she/he) is used in the status of “in focus”. Thus, demonstrative has a prominent role in most of the cognitive statuses in the Givenness Hierarchy theory.

Análisis con datos de panel de los factores determinantes del nivel de endeudamiento de las grandes empresas ecuatorianas del sector manufacturero

La política de financiación establece cómo deberán ser obtenidos los recursos que cubrirán las necesidades de fondos de la empresa. El objetivo de este estudio fue determinar las variables que explican el nivel de endeudamiento de 218 grandes empresas del sector manufacturero ecuatoriano, durante el período 2008-2018 y qué teoría ajusta de mejor manera las decisiones de financiamiento de estas empresas, así como comparar los resultados obtenidos con los propuestos por las teorías de trade off y jerarquía financiera. La metodología empleada fue una estructura de datos de panel, con un modelo de efectos fijos; se realizó la estimación a través de mínimos cuadrados ordinarios lo que permitió conocer la significancia global del modelo, así como las variables que explican el nivel de endeudamiento y su respectiva significancia estadística. Las variables que resultaron ser estadísticamente significativas para explicar el nivel de endeudamiento de las empresas fueron: tamaño, reputación y liquidez. En este estudio la teoría de jerarquía financiera tuvo mayor poder explicativo a la hora de evaluar la forma de cómo se financian las empresas grandes del sector manufacturero ecuatoriano.Palabras Clave: Datos de panel, endeudamiento, estructura de capital, jerarquía financiera, trade off Abstract The financing policy establishes how the resources that will cover the company’s funding needs should be obtained. The objective of this study was to determine the variables that explain the level of indebtedness of 218 large companies in the Ecuadorian manufacturing sector, during the period 2008-2018, and which theory best adjusts the financing decisions of these companies, as well as to compare the Results obtained with those proposed by the theories of trade off and financial hierarchy. The methodology used was a panel data structure, with a fixed effects model, the estimation was carried out through ordinary least squares, which allowed knowing the global significance of the model, as well as the variables that explain the level of indebtedness and its respective statistical significance. The variables that turned out to be statistically significant to explain the level of indebtedness of the companies were: size, reputation and liquidity. In this study, the financial hierarchy theory had greater explanatory power when evaluating the way in which large companies in the Ecuadorian manufacturing sector are financed.Keywords: Panel data, capital structure, indebtedness, financial hierarchy, trade off

Prosody-syntax interface and prosodic phrasing in brazilian portuguese

This paper focuses on the Brazilian Portuguese (PB) prosodic phrasing and has two main goals: (1) to find a correlation between the prosodic constituents boundaries, as described by the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory (Nespor & Vogel, 2007 [1986], a.o.) and the perception and production of spontaneous and reading speech breaks, and (2) to describe the phonological characteristics and the syntactic ranking of perceived and non perceived edges. The corpus under analysis includes 5 extracts both of spontaneous and reading speech lasting about 2 minutes each. The reading speech (LE) emerged from the spontaneous speech (FE) orthographic transcription which was collected from an interview in an informal environment. In the perception test, 11 referees heard the 10 speaking extracts, without punctuation, and marked the perceived breaks in the orthographic transcription of each of them. Both the 5 speakers and the 11 referees were students at UFRJ, born in Rio de Janeiro, and were between 22 and 38 years old.The results point out that the prosodic breaks are mainly perceived at the intonational phrase (I) boundary, regardless of the speech style (FE: 91%; LE 99%). However, in LE, 64% of the foreseen I boundaries, described by the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory, were perceived as breaks, but in FE, just 37% were perceived. The most usual nuclear contour in both styles is H+L* L% (this being the Portuguese neutral declarative contour), but its occurrence frequency at perceived breaks draws a distinction between LE and FE (67% and 30%, respectively). In FE, contours like L+H* H% and L*+H H% are also produced (34%). In general, descendant nuclei in LE are predominant, as well as the edge tone L; in FE, both the descendant and ascendant nuclei distribution and low or high boundaries are similar. After running a statistic test, the appearance of an L edge, as a predictive for perception, was globally significant. Concerning the syntactic boundary, it was statistically checked and the result points out that breaks are mainly perceived at the matrix phrase limit (LE: 59%; FE: 61%,), showing the endurance of the matrix phrase edge/I boundary mapping. In general, FE has proved to have a bigger variation on the relation of predicted, perceived and produced, as it was expected, which was also confirmed by statistics. Therefore, the results show that the foreseen I phrasing is fairly robust in both styles, once only 13% of the predicted I boundaries have not been produced as so, regarding intonation. Besides, just 1,4% of the predicted phonological phrase (f) boundaries (and produced as Is) were perceived as breaks by the referees. With this study one may conclude that LE and FE share the same prosodic grammar, performed by the same type of phonological/syntactic cues; nevertheless, these are more consistent in LE and have a more disperse way in FE, adding to a greater difficulty at the systematic perception of prosodic boundaries in FE than in LE.

Monte Carlo Tree Search and Cognitive Hierarchy Theory for Interactive-Behavior Prediction in Fast Trajectory Planning and Automated Lane Change

Predicting the states of the surrounding traffic is one of the major problems in automated driving. Maneuvers such as lane change, merge, and exit management could pose challenges in the absence of intervehicular communications and can benefit from driver behavior prediction. Predicting the motion of surrounding vehicles and trajectory planning need to be computationally efficient for real-time implementation. The main goal of this paper is to develop a fast algorithm that predicts the future states of the neighboring vehicles. The proposed workflow employs Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) along with an on-policy learning technique for fast trajectory planning in multi-lane highway traffic scenarios. Also, for the inclusion of behavioral aspects, cognitive hierarchy and level-K game theories are utilized to predict the reaction and decision of the surrounding drivers. Simulation case studies demonstrate that our proposed approach is real-time implementable and can often avoid collision in difficult simulated confrontations.