Aforização no discurso de autoajuda

In this paper, based on Maingueneau’s (2006, 2010) thoughts on aphorisation and on the differences between aphorising and textual enunciation, we analyze some detached utterances from the self-help discourse, by highlighting some of their meaning effects and their role in such discourse. The analysis shows that the aphorising detachments support the self-help discourse enunciator in the process of guiding the interlocutors. Such aphorizing detachments allow the enunciator to give order as if he or she were enunciating the truth, which attenuates the enunciator’s authoritative character, who is supposed to give order explicitly. Moreover, such utterances activate the play between “to say and not to say,” by simulating that the self-help discourse is based on an undeniable truth, which reinforces its persuasive power.

The significance of owner participation in a successful detached housing development in Malaysia: A literature review

The detached housing scheme is a unique and exclusive segment of the residential property market in Malaysia. Generally, the product is expensive and for many Malaysians who can afford them, owning a detached house is a once in a lifetime opportunity. In spite of this, most of the owners fail to fully comprehend the specific need of this type of housing scheme, increasing the risk of it being a problematic project. Unlike other types of pre-designed ‘mass housing’ schemes, the detached housing scheme may be built specifically to cater the needs and demands of its owner. Therefore, maximum owner participation is vital as the development progresses to guarantee the success of the project. In addition, due to it’s unique design the house would have to individually comply with the requirements and regulations of relevant authorities. Failure of owner to recognise this will result in delays, fines and penalties, disputes and ultimately cost overruns. These circumstances highlight the need for a model to guide the owner through the entire development process of a detached house. Therefore, this research aims to develop a model for a successful detached housing development in Malaysia through maximising owner participation during it’s various development stages. To achieve this, questionnaire surveys and case studies methods shall be employed to acquire the detached housing owners’ experiences in developing their detached houses in Malaysia. Relevant statistical tools shall be applied to analyse the responses. The results gained from this study shall be synthesised into a model of successful detached housing development for the reference of future detached housing owners in Malaysia.

i-vector based speaker recognition on short utterances

Robust speaker verification on short utterances remains a key consideration when deploying automatic speaker recognition, as many real world applications often have access to only limited duration speech data. This paper explores how the recent technologies focused around total variability modeling behave when training and testing utterance lengths are reduced. Results are presented which provide a comparison of Joint Factor Analysis (JFA) and i-vector based systems including various compensation techniques; Within-Class Covariance Normalization (WCCN), LDA, Scatter Difference Nuisance Attribute Projection (SDNAP) and Gaussian Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis (GPLDA). Speaker verification performance for utterances with as little as 2 sec of data taken from the NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluations are presented to provide a clearer picture of the current performance characteristics of these techniques in short utterance conditions.

PLDA based speaker recognition on short utterances

This paper investigates the effects of limited speech data in the context of speaker verification using a probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) approach. Being able to reduce the length of required speech data is important to the development of automatic speaker verification system in real world applications. When sufficient speech is available, previous research has shown that heavy-tailed PLDA (HTPLDA) modeling of speakers in the i-vector space provides state-of-the-art performance, however, the robustness of HTPLDA to the limited speech resources in development, enrolment and verification is an important issue that has not yet been investigated. In this paper, we analyze the speaker verification performance with regards to the duration of utterances used for both speaker evaluation (enrolment and verification) and score normalization and PLDA modeling during development. Two different approaches to total-variability representation are analyzed within the PLDA approach to show improved performance in short-utterance mismatched evaluation conditions and conditions for which insufficient speech resources are available for adequate system development. The results presented within this paper using the NIST 2008 Speaker Recognition Evaluation dataset suggest that the HTPLDA system can continue to achieve better performance than Gaussian PLDA (GPLDA) as evaluation utterance lengths are decreased. We also highlight the importance of matching durations for score normalization and PLDA modeling to the expected evaluation conditions. Finally, we found that a pooled total-variability approach to PLDA modeling can achieve better performance than the traditional concatenated total-variability approach for short utterances in mismatched evaluation conditions and conditions for which insufficient speech resources are available for adequate system development.

The significance of owner participation for a successful detached housing development in Malaysia

The detached housing scheme is a unique and exclusive segment of the residential property market in Malaysia. Generally, the product is expensive and for many Malaysians who can afford them, owning a detached house is a once in a lifetime opportunity. In spite of this, most of the owners failed to fully comprehend the specific need of this type of housing scheme, increasing the risk of it being a problematic undertaking. Unlike other types of pre-designed "mass housing" schemes, the detached housing scheme may be built specifically to cater the needs and demands of its owner. Therefore, owner participation during critical development stages is vital to guarantee the success of the development as a whole. In addition, due to its unique design the house would have to individually comply with the requirements and regulations of relevant authorities. Failure by the owner to recognise this will result in delays, penalties, disputes and ultimately cost overruns. These circumstances highlight the need for a research to guide the owner through participation during the critical development stages of a detached house. Therefore, this research aims to develop a guideline to improve owner participation for a successful detached house development in Malaysia. To achieve the aim, questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews were employed to collect the detached house owners' and consultants' & contractors' responses through their experiences in developing detached houses in Malaysia. Stratified and random sampling were utilised to gather information from both parties to represent Malaysian detached house participants. The questionnaire responses were analysed through the application of quantitative analysis such as descriptive analysis, factor analysis and structural equation modelling which were substantiated through qualitative analysis procedure such as content analysis. This research had identified that in order to produce a successful outcome detached house owners are required to participate during critical stages of the development. In the planning stage, the owner needs to provide proper specific input to the consultant regarding his/her expectations of the cost for the entire development, its detailed specification and general idea of the internal and external design of the detached house and its compound. In the contracting stage, the owner must make the appropriate choice of selecting the right contractor for the job. This decision may be taken after recommendations from the consultants or from the owner's personal contacts or experiences but it is not recommended for the owner to select a contractor primarily on the basis of the lowest bid. In the completion stage, the owner may need to attend a number of important site meetings to ensure that the progress of the works is according to what had been planned and the completion date is achievable. By having the owners undertake an active role during critical stages of the development, not only the quality and delivery of the development improved but also there is an increase in satisfaction to the owners themselves.

Combining detached watchdog journalism with development ideals: An exploration of Fijian journalism culture

Development journalism has been a key focus of discussion among journalism scholars for around half a decade, but most of the attention has been firmly on African and Asian countries. This paper examines the situation on the little-researched island nation of Fiji, which has experienced considerable political instability since independence in 1970. Based on interviews with 77 of the country’s small population of just over 100 journalists, we find that journalism in Fiji exhibits similarities to Western journalism ideals, but also a significant development journalism orientation. A comparison with six other countries from the global South shows that this mix is not unique, and we argue that Western journalism approaches and development ideals are not by necessity mutually exclusive, as has often been argued. In this way, the article aims to contribute to a reassessment of our understanding of development journalism and how journalists in developing societies view their work.

A detached leaf bioassay to screen Durian cultivars for susceptibility to Phytophthora palmivora

A detached-leaf bioassay was developed and used to screen five durian (Durio zibethinus) cultivars against Phytophthora palmivora isolates from a trunk canker, root and fruit. The fruit isolate was less aggressive than the canker and root isolates. The bioassay using the canker isolate was later used to determine the variation in resistance of D. macarantha and nineteen cultivars of D. zibethinus. The cultivars displayed a range of responses with Parung and Gob being most tolerant, with Gaan Yaow, Chanee and Penang 88 being susceptible. The remaining germplasm fell between Gaan Yaow and Penang 88 in susceptibility. The leaf bioassay was found to be a rapid and reliable method for assessing the susceptibility of durian cultivars.

Word order and tonal shape in the production of focus in short Finnish utterances

This paper presents results from a study on the production of Finnish prosody. The effect of word order and the tonal shape in the production of Finnish prosody was studied as produced by 8 native Finnish speakers. Predictions formulated with regard to results from an earlier study pertaining to the perception of promi- nence were tested. These predictions had to do with the tonal shape of the utterances in the form of a flat hat pattern and the effect of word order on the so called top-line declination within an adver- bial phrase in the utterances. The results from the experiment give support to the following claims: the temporal domain of prosodic focus is the whole utterance, word order reversal from unmarked to marked has an effect on the production of prosody, and the pro- duction of the tonal aspects of focus in Finnish follows a basic flat hat pattern. That is the prominence of a word can be produced by an f 0 rise or a fall, depending on the location of the word in an utterance. The basic accentual shape of a Finnish word is then not a pointed rise/fall hat shape as claimed before since it can vary depending on the syllable structure and the position within an ut- terance.

An investigation of detached shock waves

This investigation demonstrates an application of a flexible wall nozzle for testing in a supersonic wind tunnel. It is conservative to say that the versatility of this nozzle is such that it warrants the expenditure of time to carefully engineer a nozzle and incorporate it in the wind tunnel as a permanent part of the system. The gradients in the test section were kept within one percent of the calibrated Mach number, however, the gradients occurring over the bodies tested were only ± 0.2 percent in Mach number.

The conditions existing on a finite cone with a vertex angle of 75° were investigated by considering the pressure distribution on the cone and the shape of the shock wave. The pressure distribution on the surface of the 75° cone when based on upstream conditions does not show any discontinuities at the theoretical attachment Mach number.

Both the angle of the shock wave and the pressure distribution of the 75° cone are in very close agreement with the theoretical values given in the Kopal report, (Ref. 3).

The location of the intersection of the sonic line with the surface of the cone and with the shock wave are given for the cone. The blocking characteristics of the GALCIT supersonic wind tunnel were investigated with a series of 60° cones.

Detached-eddy simulation of transonic flow past a fan-blade section

Detached-eddy simulation of transonic flow past a thin section of a fan blade has been carried out. The inflow Mach number is 1.03, and a bow shock forms upstream of the blade. The shock (corresponding to an adjacent blade) impinges on the suction-side boundary layer which causes separation and rapid transition to turbulence. The boundary layer later re-attaches near the trailing edge. The pressure-side boundary layer transitions near the leading edge and remains attached. Mean surface pressure shows basic agreement with a steady RANS calculation; strong shock motion in the DES is the major cause of discrepancy. Surface pressure spectra are investigated, and low-frequency two-dimensional disturbances associated with the shock motion are dominant. Removing the two-dimensional component from the spectra, the pressure-side three-dimensional spectra reproduce the spectral shape given by a correlation for flat-plate boundary layer wall-pressure spectra developed by Goody. 1 The suction-side disturbances produce similar high- and intermediate-frequency scalings despite substantially different boundary layer development. Near-wake results show that disturbance kinetic energy peaks at the suction-side inflection point of the mean profile, and that the energy is concentrated at low frequencies relative to the near-trailing edge surface pressure. Copyright © 2009 by the authors.