Coherent Image Source Modeling of Sound Fields in Long Spaces with a Sound-Absorbing Ceiling

Sound-absorbing boundaries can attenuate noise propagation in practical long spaces, but fast and accurate sound field modeling in this situation is still difficult. This paper presents a coherent image source model for simple yet accurate prediction of the sound field in long enclosures with a sound absorbing ceiling. In the proposed model, the reflections on the absorbent boundary are separated from those on reflective ones during evaluating reflection coefficients. The model is compared with the classic wave theory, an existing coherent image source model and a scale-model experiment. The results show that the proposed model provides remarkable accuracy advantage over the existing models yet is fast for sound prediction in long spaces.

Facing a ‘civilisational choice’: Images of Europe by the populist radical right in the 2019 European elections

This paper deals with the perceptions of Europe as developed by the European populist radical right over the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament elections. The study is based on the public communications of three leading political parties in this spectrum: France’s Rassemblement national, Italy’s Lega and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. By applying image theory in international relations, the paper comes to the conclusion that the radical right managed to construct a relatively coherent image of the EU as a distant undemocratic actor in sharp contrast to the alternative narrative of one ‘Europe of fatherlands’ described in mostly civilisational terms.

The capibaribe park project, Recife: using the river to reinvent the city

Recife is an amphibious city whose urban development does not value its rivers. In the past, the city’s main watercourse, the river Capibaribe, was understood to play a key role in structuring urban spaces and providing connectivity. Since then, this understanding has dwindled, and the resulting situation is a cause of great concern. Recife City has turned its back on the banks of its rivers and neglected both their capacity to smooth and shape urban space, and their potential to create a coherent image of the city. Recife is one of those cities in the world that are most vulnerable to climate change, ranking 16th in the list of world hotspots. In order to confront these challenges and rethink the role of the river that runs in the heart of Recife, researchers, architects, engineers, and sociologists from Research and Innovation for Cities — Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (INCITI-UFPE) were invited by the Recife City Hall to draw up plans for a park stretching along the river’s banks. Capibaribe Park Project attempts to answer one key question: How can we use the river to transform the city? The park project is based on a structural approach to landscape and is guided by the precepts of sustainability and regeneration of public spaces, in line with the emerging paradigm that combines a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector approach with water-sensitive design and social participation. The present article presents an overview of the main characteristics and development of this project, its theoretical and methodological underpinnings, its contribution to society, and the results achieved so far. It shows how, in addition to the planned park, the project also envisages the installation of a much more extensive system of parks, as a first stage towards the creation of park-city by the 500th anniversary of the foundation of Recife, in 2037.

Burning the Archive, Building the State? Politics, Paper, and US Power in Postwar Mexico

This article explores how the Mexican state gathered, archived and destroyed information. It focuses on the US–Mexico campaign against foot-and-mouth disease between 1947 and 1952, whose paper archive Mexican officials burned near the successful conclusion of the campaign. This article argues that several factors shaped the context for this documentary bonfire and made the 1940s a key point of inflection in Mexico’s history of official information-gathering: the dominant party’s system of elite power-sharing, the growth of a reading public and the regime’s drift rightward. At the same time, the nature of the foot-and-mouth disease campaign itself ensured that, despite its possible uses, the archive was particularly sensitive, providing evidence of the embarrassing gaps that began to yawn between the state’s language of revolutionary nationalism and its political practise. Indeed, the bonfire represented the culmination of practises Mexican officials had already developed throughout the campaign to reconcile the demands of legibility and deniability, hemispheric integration and nationalism, political stability and state capacity. More broadly, the case illustrates the uneven effects of US assistance on the development of state capacity, the authoritarian but institutionally weak character of the early PRIísta state, and the role of archives in maintaining a coherent image of state sovereignty.

Magic Angle Spinning and Truncated Field Concept in NMR

In order to thoroughly comprehend and adequtely interpret NMR data, it is necessary to perceive the complex structure of spin Hamiltonian. Although NMR principles have been extensively discussed in a number of distinguished introductory publications, it still remains difficult to find illustrative graphical models revealing the tensorial nature of spin interaction. Exposure of the structure standing behind mathematical formulas can clarify intangible concepts and provide a coherent image of basic phenomena. This approach is essential when it comes to hard to manage, time-dependent processes such as Magic Angle Spinning (MAS), where the anisotropic character of the spin system interactions couple with experimentally introduced time evolution processes. The presented work concerns fundamental aspects of solid state NMR namely: the uniqueness of the tetrahedral angle and evolution of both dipolar D and chemical shield σ coupling tensors under MAS conditions.

Speech image in the system of speech design: methodology and technologies

The paper contains theoretical foundation of a new special pragmatically significant sphere of linguistics formed on the junction of rhetorical poetics, imagology and speech ethology – “speech designing” (constructing verbal and speech images with pragmatic aims, their realization with appropriate means of speech behavior, working out corresponding methods and techniques of professional education and their use). It also includes description of methods (technologies) created and approbated by the author for constructing personal (individual) speech image with aims socially important for its “owner”. Speech image (SI) is regarded as: 1) base (structure forming frame and model) of coherent individual image; 2) main unit of personal presentation in multimedia communication process; 3) socially significant image of its bearer, defining and presenting his social role and position; 4) system of selecting and organizing means of speech behavior in all discourse levels. SI dynamic time structure is described significant for SI lability (possibility of its varying according to changes of speech environment) and consequently for SI effectivity. Technology of creating SI and formation of corresponding supporting it speech behavior making possible its realization is worked out and described by stage, beginning with analysis and estimation of given speech status of the bearer (client), creating project of resulting SI in terms of speech (rhetoric) ideal and type of speech culture, through gradual promotion over types of speech culture and discourse levels towards the planned coherent image. The technology is worked out and approbated during special student course following the author’s program “Rhetorical Poetics” (A.M.Gorky Literature Institute, Moscow, 2005-2014), developed in “Professor Mikhalskaya Speech Design Workshop” and video course ‘Speech Image” (Mikhalskaya, Moscow, 2019).

ВОССТАНОВЛЕНИЕ КОГЕРЕНТНЫХ ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЙ ПОВЕРХНОСТЕЙ В ЗОНЕ ФРЕНЕЛЯ МЕТОДАМИ МНОГОКАНАЛЬНОЙ ОБРАБОТКИ СИГНАЛОВ

The generalized structure of the electromagnetic field in the registration area is considered in the case of the solution of problems of remote sensing of the underlying surfaces. Examples of the existing radar and optical coherent devices are given. Analytical expressions for the electromagnetic field in the reception area when sounding is carried out in a near-field Fresnel region, in the assumption that the size of the field of registration and radiation is considerably less than a distance between them, are concretized. It is shown the main operations that are necessary for the recovery of coherent images in a near-field Fresnel region by the methods of multichannel signal processing. Research shows that as the amplitude-phase distribution of the registration field is necessary to choose the classical basic function of Fresnel transformation with the reversed sign in the exponent power. Formally, in an infinite range, the Fresnel transform is invertible, i.e. in the ideal case, the function can be completely restored. However physically to Fresnel's region satisfies area with finite sizes. From the analysis of the obtained operations over the received field, it follows that the radar or optical system forms an estimate of the coherent image in the form of a convolution of a true image of the underlying surface with an ambiguity function. Generally, this function contains two multipliers, one of which determines the resolution of recovery of the coherent image. In that specific case, when the linear sizes of the field of registration go to infinity, ambiguity function takes a form of delta function and the required image can be restored without distortions. It is offered to determine resolution by the width between first zeros of ambiguity function. For rectangular area ambiguity function has the form of two sinc functions which width is directly proportional to wavelength, to the height of sounding and is inversely proportional to the linear sizes of receiving area on the corresponding coordinates. Finally, it is mentioned that for the higher-quality coherent imaging with good resolution by the same receiving area it is necessary to perform scanning and movement in space

МАТЕМАТИЧЕСКОЕ ОПИСАНИЕ ПРОЦЕДУР ПОСТРОЕНИЯ КОГЕРЕНТНЫХ ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЙ ПРИРОДНЫХ СРЕД В ЗОНЕ ФРАУНГОФЕРА МНОГОКАНАЛЬНЫМИ РАДИОТЕХНИЧЕСКИМИ СИСТЕМАМИ

The structure of the electromagnetic field in the domain of its registration is considered in the case of the solution of problems of remote sensing of the underlying surfaces on the basis of the phenomenological approach. This approach is mainly based on the theory of ray optics and the Huygens-Fresnel principle. It allows to determine the radiated and scattered fields for complex types of surfaces. Analysis of the structure of the electromagnetic field shows that it can be regarded as a mathematical transformation over the true image of the surface. In this case, the basic procedures for the coherent imaging in the far-field Fraunhofer region by multichannel radio-engineering systems should be based on the inverse transformation. For incomplete restoration of the desired image, without the phase and attenuation due to propagation, the basic operation is the inverse Fourier transform on the angular coordinates. The quality of the imaging in the Fraunhofer zone is determined by the ambiguity function. In a simple case of a rectangular receiving domain, ambiguity function has the form of two sinc functions which width is proportional to wavelength, to height of sounding and the linear sizes of receiving domain. If the distance to each point of the surface is known, then it is possible to completely reconstruct the coherent image. In this case, it is necessary to apply sliding short-scale Fourier transform to the received electromagnetic field. Obtained results correspond to the classical theory of resonance scattering. While ambiguity function is constant in the infinite limits of integration for a specific fixed value of the direction, only one spectral component (spatial harmonic) can be extracted from the desired image. it Is possible to allocate an ever wider range of spatial frequencies with the narrowing of the ambiguity function. In the limit, when the ambiguity function is a delta function, the full spectrum of frequencies of the desired image can be extracted, i.e. this function can be completely restored. If it is not possible to create a system with narrow ambiguity function then the higher-quality coherent image can be obtained by the same receiving domain by scanning or movement in space

Relationship between corporate image and corporate reputation in Polish banking sector

Research background: Corporate reputation and image are two valuable intangible resources of the company, aimed at building its long-term competitive ad-vantage and market value. Although reputation and image are interrelated categories, they should not be identified with each other. The differences are not only in the definition and the character, but also in the mechanism of formation and tools to create these resources by the company. Image is a picture, perceptions and associations about the company in the minds of consumers, which may be created using the tools of PR and advertising in a relatively short period of time. Reputation is a review of the company and its activities, formulated by various stakeholder groups, on the basis of not only advertising, but also on the basis of the assessment of real activities of companies in the long term. Purpose of the article: The cognitive objective of the article is to point out the fundamental differences between reputation and image on the basis of the analysis of approaches and theoretical concepts. The practical objective is to make an attempt to identify the differences and relationships between reputation and image on the basis of empirical analysis, therefore the research was conducted in the Polish banking sector. Methods: In order to evaluate image and reputation, the survey method was used aimed at the customers of banks operating on the Polish market. Findings & Value added: Reputation and image are two separate, intangible assets that support each other and the company needs each of them to build its competitive advantage. The results of empirical study allowed formulating the thesis that the banks, whose reputation is rated better by the customers, also have a better and more coherent image in their minds.