Advertising Narratives of Society and Politics: A Semiotic Analysis of Amul’s Print Ads

Contextual knowledge is the most important aspect of language comprehension. We define contextual knowledge as both general knowledge and discourse knowledge, i.e., knowledge of the situational context, background knowledge, and co-textual context. In this paper, we will discuss the significance of contextual knowledge in comprehending the humor found in Amul's cartoon advertisements in India. Throughout the process, we will analyze these advertisements and determine whether humor is an effective tool for advertising and, as a result, marketing. These bilingual advertisements also assume that the audience has the necessary linguistic knowledge, such as vocabulary, morphology, and syntax in English and Hindi. Various techniques such as punning, portmanteaus, and parodies of popular proverbs, expressions, acronyms, famous dialogues, songs, and so on are used to convey the message humorously. The current study will focus on these linguistic cues and the necessary context for understanding wit and humor. This study will also employ semiotics and sign methodology to analyze the message provided by the cartoons. According to the research findings, cartoons serve two purposes: political communication and advertising; however, advertising is camouflaged and not placed in an obvious manner.

Mathieu moonshine and Siegel Modular Forms

A second-quantized version of Mathieu moonshine leads to product formulae for functions that are potentially genus-two Siegel Modular Forms analogous to the Igusa Cusp Form. The modularity of these functions do not follow in an obvious manner. For some conjugacy classes, but not all, they match known modular forms. In this paper, we express the product formulae for all conjugacy classes of M24 in terms of products of standard modular forms. This provides a new proof of their modularity.

“One ruler measures to the end”: Rule hardening in grassroots governance – taking a pilot project in urban renewal as an example

Regarding launching an urban renewal project, rising social pressure makes the grassroots state harden the rules while the remaining high pressure from the top makes them keep rules elastic, the contradiction between which causes a dilemma in urban development nowadays. Taking a landmark pilot project as an example, via the observation of the practice of the rule-hardening principle described as “one ruler measures to the end”, this article tries to answer the question of how it is possible for power to reproduce its operational space under recently rising regulatory constraints. In this case, the principle of “rule hardening” includes both “results” and “process” and is fulfilled through a three-step mechanism of hardening in external conditions, hardening in compromising rules and hardening in the limitation of introducing pressure. Through this mechanism, the grassroots state manages to mobilize the resources embedded in the system and extend the hidden boundaries of the hard and rigorous rules on the surface that make the rules elastic and soft again, but in a more formal institutional and organizational way. This could be considered the state’s response to the rising social protests during the last phase and indicates a more subtle and less obvious manner of governance, which shows the continuous interaction between the state and the society in the long view of history.

Foreword

Published: Sudha Setty, Foreword, 42 W. NEW ENG. L. REV. 333 (2020).In November 2019, the Western New England Law Review held its symposium, On Account of Sex: Women’s Suffrage and the Role of Gender in Politics Today. The symposium articles ask us to look at history to see what factors enabled path-breaking activists to secure the right to vote in a time of immense national turmoil. They also ask us to weigh how history should assess the strategic decisions that ultimately gained political rights for some women, but deliberately excluded Black women and other activists. These historical accounts help us consider how the right to vote is faring, particularly after a series of cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court has enabled a profound movement toward disenfranchisement through invalidating key sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing requirements for state-issued voter identification that serve to prevent voting, enabling extraordinary gerrymandering, allowing for the purging of voters from the registration rolls, and making it harder for people to vote absentee even during a pandemic. They also take up issues regarding gender, race, class, status in gaining rights and political representation; how the environment surrounding voting rights has experienced and continues to experience great challenges; and how, although we can see radical threats to those rights in a profound and obvious manner in today’s politics, those threats are simply current versions of a long-standing issue in United States politics and in politics around the world.

A spatial econometric empirical research on the impact of industrial agglomeration on haze pollution in China

Based on statistical data on 30 provincial administrative regions in China from 2000 to 2016, this paper conducts an empirical study of the impact of industrial agglomeration on haze pollution using the spatial Dubin model (SDM), spatial lag model (SLM), and spatial error model (SEM). The findings are as follows: (1) Industrial agglomeration can effectively reduce the degree of haze pollution. (2) Haze pollution has an inverted U-shaped relationship with economic development and population agglomeration. (3) The secondary industry has a positive correlation with haze pollution, while the tertiary industry can reduce haze pollution but not in an obvious manner. (4) The level of innovation and urbanization can help to reduce haze pollution, and the level of economic opening up and carbon dioxide emissions can exacerbate haze pollution. (5) Due to the insufficient commercialization of scientific and technological achievements, investment in science and technology is not obviously effective in preventing and controlling haze pollution. The relationship between environmental regulation and haze pollution is still unclear due to regional differences and the varied effectiveness of law enforcement. The study suggests that the government should guide industrial agglomeration in a reasonable manner, improve joint prevention and control across regions, and strengthen environmental regulation to prevent and control haze pollution.

CO2 involved synthesis of quinazoline-2,4(1H,3H)-diones in water using melamine as a thermoregulated catalyst

In this study, pharmaceutically relevant quinazoline-2,4(1H,3H)-diones were synthesized eco-efficiently by cycloaddition of CO2 and 2-aminobenzonitrile in water, catalyzed by melamine as a thermoregulated catalyst. Quinazoline-2,4(1H,3H)-dione was produced selectively with 92% yield at 120 °C, 4.2 MPa, and automatically separated from the hot catalytic aqueous solution, which was reused directly for several runs until its activity decreased in an obvious manner. Then, the catalyst melamine was recrystallized from the spent aqueous solution via simple cooling and reused for another several catalytic runs. The efficient valorization of CO2 and the straightforward stepwise recovery of the products and catalyst were important to save energy and minimize process waste for the practical industrial production.

Vision

Why do things look to us as they do? This question, formulated by psychologist Kurt Koffka, identifies the main problematic of vision science. Consider looking at a black cat. We tend to see both the cat and its colour as the same at different times. Despite the ease with which this perception occurs, the process by which we perceive is fairly complex. The initial stimulation that gives rise to seeing, consists in a pattern of light that projects on the retina – a light-sensitive layer of the eye. The so-called ‘retinal image’ is a two-dimensional projection that does not correspond in any obvious manner to the way things look. It is not three-dimensional, coloured and shaped in a similar fashion to the objects of our experience. Indeed the light projected from objects is not just different from what we see, it is also both continuously changing and ambiguous. Because the cat moves around, the light it reflects changes from moment to moment. The cat’s projection on the retina correspondingly changes in size. We do not, however, see the cat as changing in size. We tend to see it as size-constant and uniformly coloured through time. How do we explain this constancy? Along similar lines, the cat’s white paws cause on the retina a patch of light that differs in intensity from the rest. This patch could also be caused by a change in illumination. A black surface illuminated very brightly can look like a white surface illuminated very dimly. This means that the light hitting the retina from the paws is underdetermined – it does not uniquely specify what is present. But, again, we tend to see the paws as consistently white. We do not see them as shifting from being white to being black, but illuminated brightly. How do we explain this stability? A central aim of theories of vision is to answer these questions. The science that attempts to address these queries is interdisciplinary. Traditionally, philosophical theories of vision have influenced psychological theories and vice versa. The collaboration between these disciplines eventually developed into what is now known as cognitive science. Cognitive science includes – in addition to philosophy and psychology – computer science, linguistics and neuroscience. Cognitive scientists aim primarily to understand the process by which we see. Philosophers are interested in this topic particularly as it connects to understanding the nature of our acquaintance with reality. Theories of vision differ along many dimensions. Giving a full survey is not possible in this entry. One useful difference is whether a theory presumes that visual perception involves a psychological process. Psychological theories of vision hold that in achieving perception – which is itself a psychological state – the organism uses other psychological material. Opponents of psychological theories prefer to make reference to physiological, mechanical and neurophysiological explanations.

Vision

Vision is the most studied sense. It is our richest source of information about the external world, providing us with knowledge of the shape, size, distance, colour and luminosity of objects around us. Vision is fast, automatic and achieved without conscious effort; however, the apparent ease with which we see is deceptive. Ever since Kepler characterized the formation of the retinal image in the early seventeenth century, vision theorists have known that the image on the retina does not correspond in an obvious manner to the way things look. The retinal image is two-dimensional, yet we see three dimensions; the size and shape of the image that an object casts on the retina varies with the distance and perspective of the observer, yet we experience objects as having constant size and shape. The primary task of a theory of vision is to explain how useful information about the external world is recovered from the changing retinal image. Theories of vision fall roughly into two classes. Indirect theories characterize the processes underlying visual perception in psychological terms, as, for example, inference from prior data or construction of complex percepts from basic sensory components. Direct theories tend to stress the richness of the information available in the retinal image, but, more importantly, they deny that visual processes can be given any correct psychological or mental characterization. Direct theorists, while not denying that the processing underlying vision may be very complex, claim that the complexity is to be explicated merely by reference to nonpsychological, neural processes implemented in the brain. The most influential recent work in vision treats it as an information-processing task, hence as indirect. Many computational models characterize visual processing as the production and decoding of a series of increasingly useful internal representations of the distal scene. These operations are described in computational accounts by precise algorithms. Computer implementations of possible strategies employed by the visual system contribute to our understanding of the problems inherent in complex visual tasks such as edge detection and shape recognition, and make possible the rigorous testing of proposed solutions.

Reflected circles, and congruent perspective triangles

For any three points X, Y, Z, let ⊙XYZ denote the circle through X, Y, Z (the circumcircle of ∆XYZ) or, if X, Y, Z happen to be collinear, the line XYZ. (We shall often regard lines as special circles, circles of infinite radius.) This paper is about the following theorem, and extensions of it:Theorem 1: Given ∆ABC and a point P, reflect ⊙PBC, ⊙APC, ⊙ABP in the lines BC, AC, AB respectively. Then the three reflected circles have a common point, Q (see Figure 1).I do not know if this theorem is new, but I have not come across it in the literature. The reader is invited to prove it by angle-chasing, using circle theorems: let two of the reflected circles meet at Q and then prove that this point lies on the third reflected circle. This method is rather diagram-dependent, and does not seem to lead to the extensions of Theorem 1 referred to above in any very obvious manner, so we shall adopt a different approach.

Damage Monitoring in Cyclic Loaded C/C Woven Composites Using the Acousto-Ultrasonics Approach

Non-destructive monitoring of damage accumulation in woven-fabric carbon/carbon composites is a topic of high interest due to the increased use of such materials in structural components for the aerospace, automobile and defense industries. Acousto-ultrasonics (AU) is a non-destructive technique that utilizes two typical acoustic emission sensors one as a pulser and the other as a receiver. During tensile load-unload-reload tests the pulser emits an ultrasonic pulse, which in the form of elastic wave propagates through the test specimen and is captured by the receiver. As damage accumulates into the material structure the ultrasonic pulse interacts with the damaged microstructure and changes its characteristics often in a subtle not obvious manner. Consequently, sophisticated signal processing methods are needed to extract the hidden information from the recorded AU waveforms in order to identify the type of damage and quantify its severity. The diffuse field decay rate method and wavelet-based methods were applied in order to process the AU waveforms and extract damage sensitive parameters. Two types of C/C composites with different interface concepts were tested and the applied technique elucidates the damage evolution developed during cyclic loading and associated with the different interface concepts.