Note on Conquest and Cession

In this note Wight provided a brief survey of institutions for the conquest and cession of territories, illustrated by examples in European history since the fifteenth century. Some legal and political forms concealed de facto conquest and cession to spare the amour propre of the losing party and thereby minimize its humiliation. In some cases, enfeoffment combined conquest with continuing vassal status. Other methods of saving face and bargaining over status included granting an imperial vicariate, diplomatically evading the issue, camouflaging the cession, and making the cession conditional. Conquest and cession became more direct and undisguised with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, if not earlier. Since the eighteenth century, however, the consent of the residents of the territory to be ceded has become a more prominent issue. Since 1919 disregard for previous approaches to conquest and cession has led to new political and legal frameworks on recognition involving national policies such as the Stimson Doctrine, international treaties such as the Kellogg–Briand Pact, and international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.

A Review of Multidimensional Studies on the Causes for Classroom Reticent

This study explores the causes for classroom reticent from four aspects: students, teachers, classroom environment and culture. It is found that: (1) student factors are the primary factors for learners to choose silence or participation; (2) Teachers are the key factors that affect students’ participation or retention in class; (3) Classroom environment is a potential active factor that affects students’ participation or silence in class; (4) Cultural value orientation has a profound impact on students’ classroom participation or silence. It is concluded that long or short reticent in class is closely related to the teachers’ teaching guidance style, teaching questioning strategies and teaching methods, as well as students’ language ability. At the same time, it is also closely related to the value judgment and orientation of “saving face”, “respecting teachers”, exam-oriented culture and “silence” behavior and habits in traditional culture.

A Scalable Solution for Signaling Face Touches to Reduce the Spread of Surface-based Pathogens

Hand-to-Face transmission has been estimated to be a minority, yet non-negligible, vector of COVID-19 transmission and a major vector for multiple other pathogens. At the same time, as it cannot be effectively addressed with mainstream protection measures, such as wearing masks or tracing contacts, it remains largely untackled. To help address this issue, we have developed Saving Face - an app that alerts users when they are about to touch their faces, by analyzing the distortion patterns in the ultrasound signal emitted by their earphones. The system only relies on pre-existing hardware (a smartphone with generic earphones), which allows it to be rapidly scalable to billions of smartphone users worldwide. This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of the system, as well as the results of a user study testing the solution's accuracy, robustness, and user experience during various day-to-day activities (93.7% Sensitivity and 91.5% Precision, N=10). While this paper focuses on the system's application to detecting hand-to-face gestures, the technique can also be applicable to other types of gestures and gesture-based applications.

Deconstructing the Other’s Other: Analyzing the Chinese Female Image in the Film Saving Face

The image of Chinese women portrayed in American films is essentially the West’s imagination of China, conveyed by the female body and constructed in the Orientalist discourse. Over the past one hundred years, Chinese women have been primarily depicted as docile, weak, submissive, voiceless, and in need of being rescued and guided by Occidentals. With the evolution of the global order and the rise of China’s international status, the silent Orient has taken the initiative to resist and reshape this voiceless, “other-ed” image. This article aims to focus on the female characters in Saving Face, an American film directed by Chinese American director Alice Wu in 2004, and analyzes how the director reverses the stereotyped Chinese female image based on the theoretical framework of Orientalism and postcolonial studies, not only “the other” with regards to men, but also “the other” as to the Occident, thus dismantling long-held misreadings of China.