Speak Good English Movement in Singapore : Reactions in Social and Traditional Media

The first Speak Good English Movement, SGEM, took place in 2000, and has been organized annually ever since. Speaking a “standard” form of English is considered to bring increased personal power. However, the SGEM wants the Singaporeans to use “standard” English in their private life as well. A decade after the beginning of the campaign, a Speak Good Singlish Movement was started. Based on studies of language and identity, it is understandable why some Singaporeans might feel the SGEM threatens their identity. However, the reactions towards the campaign are mainly positive. For the purposes of this analysis, Twitter messages, Facebook pages, and newspaper articles from The Straits Times were collected. The SGEM has hailed both direct and indirect praise and criticism in both social and traditional media: Five newspaper articles praise the campaign while five criticize it; the results are nine and seven respectively for social media. This thesis looks at reactions towards the SGEM in both social and traditional media, analyzes how these reactions might relate to the ideas of the power of language, its variety and the relation of language and identity.

Learning as movements in interspace

My research issues (in rearch project for PhD-degree, named Drama in School) concern how learning takes place in drama education in compulsory school. One part is to explore and problematize approaches to learning (in and through drama). In this paper will the concept learning be discussed by using a thought derived from Deleuze and Guattari’s nomad philosophy. They describe learning as a movement in the interspace. Focus is on process and inquiry, not on achievement of predetermined skills and competences. 

”Varför tar man för givet att feminismen måste vara sekulär?” : En studie om muslimska feminister i svensk kontext

The purpose of this study is to examine how two Muslim feminists perceive themselves to betreated by the Swedish majority society and within the secular feminist movement. Thesurvey was conducted using qualitative method with a total of two interviews. For the study'stheoretical perspectives, I have used postcolonialism and postcolonial feminism. The result ofthe survey and the analysis show that the informants say that they face an image of Muslimwomen as considered being under oppression. The informants believe that this stereotypicalimage has its origin from the colonial period. The question that is most important for themwithin feminism is to be treated as a feminist and as a Muslim without being questioned. Theyfeel like it's hard to identify with the Swedish secular feminism, but they also feel that thegroup of Swedish secular feminists have a difficulty identifying themselves with Muslimwomen too. Consider this, one of the informants does not feel welcome among Swedishsecular feminism while the other one never had an interest in becoming a member of itbecause she did not consider them to strive for the same goal as herself. The informantsclaims that there are opportunities for them to speak in the public debate, but as Muslimfeminists they are facing a bigger struggle.

Tillämpning och utvärdering av kriterier för eTjänstetydlighet och handlingsbarhet : Actability, eTjänstetydlighet, MA/SIMM

A sequence of actions in the world have influenced the information science, one of these actions is the lateral movement in how companies use their IT-systems. IT-systems today, in comparison to before, are used by companies to improve their relationship with their customers. Every year a big amount of money is spent on developing and improving IT-systems. That is why it is important to develop and create IT-systems that are clear, and which encourage, enable and simplify a user’s action. There are criteria to use in actability and “eTjänstetydlighet”. I have in this thesis used acknowledged criteria for actability and “eTjänstetydlighet” to analyze two IT-systems that are equal to each other. This is to show how companies can develop and adjust their IT-system so that they will match today’s point of view. I have also in this thesis chosen to evaluate the usage of criteria for “eTjänstetydlighet” and that is because no one has done that before. The result of this thesis gave Monster and Proffice measures for how to develop their IT-systems. The result of this thesis also gave indications of fuzziness when using criteria for “eTjänstetydlighet”, however, I was able to use the criteria the way they were supposed to be used to fulfill their purpose.

Classification of Parkinson’s Disease using MultiPass Lvq,Logistic Model Tree,K-Star for Audio Data set : Classification of Parkinson Disease using Audio Dataset

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative illness whose cardinal symptoms include rigidity, tremor, and slowness of movement. In addition to its widely recognized effects PD can have a profound effect on speech and voice.The speech symptoms most commonly demonstrated by patients with PD are reduced vocal loudness, monopitch, disruptions of voice quality, and abnormally fast rate of speech. This cluster of speech symptoms is often termed Hypokinetic Dysarthria.The disease can be difficult to diagnose accurately, especially in its early stages, due to this reason, automatic techniques based on Artificial Intelligence should increase the diagnosing accuracy and to help the doctors make better decisions. The aim of the thesis work is to predict the PD based on the audio files collected from various patients.Audio files are preprocessed in order to attain the features.The preprocessed data contains 23 attributes and 195 instances. On an average there are six voice recordings per person, By using data compression technique such as Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) number of instances can be minimized, after data compression, attribute selection is done using several WEKA build in methods such as ChiSquared, GainRatio, Infogain after identifying the important attributes, we evaluate attributes one by one by using stepwise regression.Based on the selected attributes we process in WEKA by using cost sensitive classifier with various algorithms like MultiPass LVQ, Logistic Model Tree(LMT), K-Star.The classified results shows on an average 80%.By using this features 95% approximate classification of PD is acheived.This shows that using the audio dataset, PD could be predicted with a higher level of accuracy.

Creating Prestige and Global Networks through Conference Rituals

An international conference is a secular ritual which serves to create, recreate and shape global-wide translocal cultural sharings. Social anthropological theories and methods are used to show that, besides being an information flow junction, the international conference is a network crossroad and a way of socialising new members into aninternational research community. It is also capable of creating prestige and honour for the individual researcher,for the arranging research team, university and city. Rituals do not merely reflect the social relations or cosmology of a society, but are events that in themselves do important things through ritual forms and symbolic statements.

Folkmusikundervisningen på fiol och gitarr och dess historiska rötter

How folk musicians of today learn to play their instruments is an over-all question in this article. One violin lesson and one guitar lesson have been observed at Framnäs folk high school. Three research questions were formulated. What do the two lessons have in common? What are the differences? How could the folk music education of today be related to the Swedish fiddler movement in the 1920s and other folk music traditions? Theoretically, the interpretation of the results was based on the mimesis theory of Ricoeur. Two teachers and three students participated in the study. The results showed that the lessons were structured in a similar way and dominated by master apprenticeship teaching. The violin teacher showed a more respectful attitude towards the tradition compared to the guitar teacher. Great parts of the manifest ideology of the fiddler movement seems to have become concealed into a latent or frozen ideology in the formal folk music education of today. There seems to be no big differences between learning the music by way of visiting an older fiddler hundred years ago compared to the study of music today at a formal institution.

Design and validation of a sheet metal shearing experimental procedure

Throughout the industrial processes of sheet metal manufacturing and refining, shear cutting is widely used for its speed and cost advantages over competing cutting methods. Industrial shears may include some force measurement possibilities, but the force is most likely influenced by friction losses between shear tool and the point of measurement, and are in general not showing the actual force applied to the sheet. Well defined shears and accurate measurements of force and shear tool position are important for understanding the influence of shear parameters. Accurate experimental data are also necessary for calibration of numerical shear models. Here, a dedicated laboratory set-up with well defined geometry and movement in the shear, and high measurability in terms of force and geometry is designed, built and verified. Parameters important to the shear process are studied with perturbation analysis techniques and requirements on input parameter accuracy are formulated to meet experimental output demands. Input parameters in shearing are mostly geometric parameters, but also material properties and contact conditions. Based on the accuracy requirements, a symmetric experiment with internal balancing of forces is constructed to avoid guides and corresponding friction losses. Finally, the experimental procedure is validated through shearing of a medium grade steel. With the obtained experimental set-up performance, force changes as result of changes in studied input parameters are distinguishable down to a level of 1%.