The Destruction of Diasporic White Individuals’Sense of Identity in The Grass is Singing

The importance of diaspora identity has grown in recent years as the world becomes more interconnected and diaspora individuals are increasingly involved in matters among different ethnics.The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing is considered one of the most outstanding works of literature after World War II.Interest in ethnic identity has been heightened.The book is recognized as an introspective reflection of the spiritual crisis suffered by diaspora people and societal crises of the time.The thesis will examine the oppression imposed by dominant white group by exploring the transformation of diasporic white individuals’identity.

Progress on research and mitigation of wind-blown sand risk in Dunhuang Singing Sand Mountain and Crescent Spring Scenic area,China

The Singing Sand Mountain and Crescent Spring Scenic Spot in Dunhuang,Northwest China is a world-renowned desert attraction that is also an integral component of the Dunhuang UNESCO Global Geopark.This scenic area underwent a 30-year transformation,i.e.,from a severe sand risk with spring water threatened by sand burial due to dune deformation,to restoration of the original sand flow field and mitigation of the sand burial problem.The current paper summarizes the research on the intensive monitoring of the dynamic change of star dunes near the spring,observation of wind and sand flow movement,and then restoring the harmonic vibration of the sand particles(singing sand)that were previously silenced.The existing and prospective impacts of anthropogenic and natural forces on the deformation of the sand dunes are investigated by integrated methods,guiding the implementation of mitigating measures with significant ameliorative effects.Contrast to common sand control practices that aim to reduce wind speed and stop blown sands,our research highlights the importance of maintaining the natural wind flow field in stabilizing surrounding dunes.These mitigation measures consist of removing excessive vegetation and newly constructed buildings to recover the original wind flow field and sand transport activity.Such research and mitigation efforts ensure the scientific protection and restoration of the special desert landform,and contribute to the mutual enhancement of the conservation and exploitation of this desert scenic spot and similar sites.

Surface Molecular Encapsulation with Cyclodextrin in Promoting the Activity and Stability of Fe Single-Atom Catalyst for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Fe single-atom catalysts(Fe-SACs)have been extensively studied as a highly efficient electrocatalyst toward the oxygen reduction reaction(ORR).Nonetheless,they suffer from stability issue induced by dissolution of Fe metal center and the OH^(−)blocking.Herein,a surface molecular engineering strategy is developed by usingβ-cyclodextrins(CDs)as a localized molecular encapsulation.The CD-modified Fe-SAC(Fe-SNC-β-CD)shows obviously improved activity toward the ORR with 0.90 V,4.10 and 4.09 mA cm^(-2)for E_(1/2),J_(0)and Jk0.9,respectively.Meanwhile,the Fe-SNC-β-CD shows the excellent long-term stability against aggressive stress and the poisoning.It is confirmed through electrochemical investigation that modification ofβ-CD can,on one hand,regulate the atomic Fe coordination chemistry through the interaction between the CD and FeN_(x) moiety,while on the other mitigate the strong adsorption of OH^(−)and function as protective barrier against the poisoning molecules leading to enhanced ORR activity and stability for the Fe-SACs.The molecular encapsulation strategy demonstrates the uniqueness of post-pyrolysis surface molecular engineering for the design of single-atom catalyst.

An Ecofeminist Approach to The Grass Is Singing

The article intends to interpret The Grass Is Singing from the perspective of ecofeminism and analyze the unequal relationships between man and nature,man and woman,the white race and the black race.

Single port laparoscopy in gastroenterology and hepatology: A fine step forward

Single incision laparoscopy(SIL) has become an emerging technology aiming at a further reduction of abdominal wall trauma in minimally invasive surgery. Available data is encouraging for the safe application of standardized SIL in a wide range of procedures in gastroenterology and hepatology. Compared to technically simple SIL procedures, the merit of SIL in advanced surgeries, such as liver or colorectal interventions, compared to conventional laparsocopy is self-evident without any doubt. SIL has already passed the learning curve and is routinely utilized in expert centers. This minimized approach has allowed to enter a new era of surgical management that can not be acceded without a fruitful combination of prudent training, consistent day-to-day work and enthusiastic motivation for technical innovations. Both, basic and novel technical specifics as well as particular procedures are described herein. The focus is on the most important surgical interventions in gastroenterology and aims at reviewingthe current literature and shares our experience in a high volume center.

The Literature Review on The Grass Is Singing

The Grass Is Singing has aroused great attention since its publication in 1950.The scholars,domestic and overseas,have studied it from various theoretical perspectives,such as feminism,post-colonialism,eco-feminism,psychoanalysis,feminist geography and archetypal criticism.They mainly focus on the form of Lessing’s artistic creation,her feminist attitude,her philosophy of life and her colonial position.This thesis intends to summarize the previous research results in recent years and then to find the space left to analyze The Grass Is Singing.

Analysis of the Signal of Singing Using the Vibrato Parameter in the Context of Choir Singers

Evaluation of quality of singing is an issue subjectively realized by the experts. This paper presents the results of the analysis of the vibrato parameter in the singing. The well-known fact is the existence of vibrato of sufficient quality in the voices of professional singers. The authors focus here on the choral voices to assess the quality of their singing from the point of view of the vibrato parameter. The method presented here is developed to evaluate the vibrato while singing under conditions close to the real ones. The study was carried out on the recordings of the members of an academic choir. As a result of tests it was found that not all singers present the same quality of vibrato in terms of deviation of vibrato confidence （STDCV）.

The Comparison between "I Hear America Singing " and "春望"

Through the introduction of the American poem "I Hear America Singing" and its writer Walt Whitman, the Chinese poem " 春望 "and its writer:杜甫, and the comparison of these two poems in prosody, language, contents and emotion, writing techniques, political views field, etc, this essay analyses further some poetic phenomenon, and also draws a vivid picture of America in 19 century and China in 8 century.

An Analysis of "the Other" and "the Other World" in Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing

The term "Other" is a key concept in the framework of postcolonialism.This paper attempts to analyze the native black people's role-"the Other" in the process of colonization.The British writer Doris Lessing finds the unltimate expression in her first novel The Grass Is Singing.With the settlement of the colonizers,the South Africa has been rendered by the white colonizers as "the Other World" and the native people are regarded as "the Other" who are degraded into unspeakable animals by white people.

Study of an Interactive System of Sight-Singing and Ear-Training

This paper introduces an interactive system of sight-singing and ear-training which combines the technology of single chip microprocessor (SCM) with learning music. It contains the functions of scanning keyboard, reading the key value, interruption service, reading file and displaying file. In order to strengthen the commonality and practicability of the system, SD card is used to store the materials and the ZNFAT32 file system is transplanted to organize the materials in the form of file directory. This interactive system can recognize and perform music automatically for the users and play significant role in education and entertainment.

Jokes on Singing

A ——Why do you sing in the bathtub(浴缸)? ——The door won't lock, so I have to. B ——I've been singing ever since I was two years old. ——No wonder you're hoarse(嘶哑的). C ——Why do you always stand outside on the porch when your wife sings? ——Because I don't want the neighbors to think I'm beating her.

浅析张爱玲、孔慧怡合译之作 The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai

The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai为张爱玲译作之沧海遗珠,此译本凝结了张氏数十年翻译之功。后经孔慧怡整理,张、孔二人合译之The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai始由美国哥伦比亚大学出版社出版。从译者使用的翻译策略,即归化、异化并举之策略和对超文本的有效使用两方面评析这部合译之作可以发现,The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai再现了原文平淡而又近自然的风格。

A HMM-based Mandarin Chinese Singing Voice Synthesis System

We propose a mandarin Chinese singing voice synthesis system, in which hidden Markov model(HMM)-based speech synthesis technique is used. A mandarin Chinese singing voice corpus is recorded and musical contextual features are well designed for training. F0 and spectrum of singing voice are simultaneously modeled with context-dependent HMMs. There is a new problem, F0 of singing voice is always sparse because of large amount of context, i.e., tempo and pitch of note, key, time signature and etc. So the features hardly ever appeared in the training data cannot be well obtained. To address this problem,difference between F0 of singing voice and that of musical score(DF0) is modeled by a single Viterbi training. To overcome the over-smoothing of the generated F0 contour, syllable level F0 model based on discrete cosine transforms(DCT) is applied, F0 contour is generated by integrating two-level statistical models.The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system outperforms the baseline system in both objective and subjective evaluations. The proposed system can generate a more natural F0 contour. Furthermore, the syllable level F0 model can make singing voice more expressive.

Sternal Reconstruction of Deep Sternal Wound Infections Following Median Sternotomy by Single-stage Muscle Flaps Transposition

Objective To assess clinical effectiveness of using bilateral pectoralis major or plus rectus abdominis muscle flaps in treating deep sternal wound infection(DSWI) following median sternotomy. Methods Between January 2009 and December 2013, 19 patients with DSWI after median sternotomy for cardiac surgery were admitted to our hospital, including 14 males(73.7%) and 5 females(26.3%), aged 55±13(18-78) years. According to the Pairolero classification of infected median sternotomies, 3(15.8%) patients were type II, and the other 16(84.2%) were type III. Surgical procedure consisted of adequate debridement of infected sternum, costal cartilage, granulation, steel wires, suture residues and other foreign substances. Sternal reconstruction used the bilateral pectoralis major or plus rectus abdominis muscle flaps to obliterate dead space. The drainage tubes were placed and connected to a negative pressure generator for adequate drainage. Results There were no intraoperative deaths. In 15 patients(78.9%), bilateral pectoral muscle flaps were mobilized sufficiently to cover and stabilize the defect created by wound debridement. 4 patients(21.0%) needed bilateral pectoral muscle flaps plus rectus abdominis muscle flaps because their pectoralis major muscle flaps could not reach the lowest portion of the wound. 2 patients(10.5%) presented with subcutaneous infection, and 3 patients(15.8%) had hematoma. They recovered following local debridement and medication. 17 patients(89.5%) were examined at follow-up 12 months later, all healed and having stable sternum. No patients showed infection recurrence during the follow-up period over 12 months. Conclusion DSWI following median sternotomy may be effectively managed with adequate debridement of infected tissues and reconstruction with bilateral pectoralis major muscle or plus rectus abdominis muscle flap transposition.

A Probe into the Features of Creation and Singing of the Vocal Caprice Moonlight on the Spring River

The vocal caprice Moonlight on the Spring River is an outstanding representative in China's vocal music art,in which singers are highly required in both humanity and singing skills.To interpret this piece of work,satisfying tone quality,good intonation and correct control of breath are all necessary,but only those who have a thorough understanding of its background and features of creation can interpret the artistic conception in Moonlight on the Spring River better and perfectly.

Efficacy of Singing Bowls in Childhood Asthma—A Pilot and Feasibility Study

The potential use of sound and vibration for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes remains largely under-explored and under-estimated.Sound and vibrational energy has great positive impact on the mind and body.It could be particularly useful for psychosomatic diseases as a complementary therapy.Singing bowls,the spiritual ancient therapy has been claimed to aid in mind relaxation and painful and inflammatory conditions.Childhood asthma is an inflammatory airway disease and a psychosomatic disorder.The psychological management in it is often neglected leading to under-treatment or a relapse.Hence,we hypothesized that sound therapy with singing bowls might be useful as complementary therapy in management of childhood asthma.We aimed to study the effect of singing bowl session on child’s asthma severity and control and on the psychological well-being.Children<18 years of age and suffering from childhood asthma were recruited after informed written consent of parents.At the baseline,demographic and clinical details were noted.Anthropometric parameters,PEFR readings,asthma severity,parental and child’s subjective feeling of well-being,asthma control score,and pediatric symptom checklist score(based on age)were determined.The child was given 15 min of singing bowl session as per the set protocol.The subjective and objective evaluation of asthma control and psychological assessment was repeated at 1 month and 3 months follow-up and compared with the baseline results for clinical significance.Eighteen children formed the study group with a mean age of 9.13±2.15 years(range 2–15.25 years).4 children had psychological issues on initial screening.There was a significant improvement in asthma severity,subjective feeling of well-being and asthma control score at 3 months(p<0.05).Singing bowl therapy could be a useful,low-cost complementary therapy in childhood asthmatics.

Low-Rank Sparse Representation with Pre-Learned Dictionaries and Side Information for Singing Voice Separation

At present, although the human speech separation has achieved fruitful results, it is not ideal for the separation of singing and accompaniment. Based on low-rank and sparse optimization theory, in this paper, we propose a new singing voice separation algorithm called Low-rank, Sparse Representation with pre-learned dictionaries and side Information (LSRi). The algorithm incorporates both the vocal and instrumental spectrograms as sparse matrix and low-rank matrix, meanwhile combines pre-learning dictionary and the reconstructed voice spectrogram form the annotation. Evaluations on the iKala dataset show that the proposed methods are effective and efficient for singing voice separation.

Singing Therapy Improving Peak Flow, Speech and Eating Abilities in Adults with Cerebral Palsy

Introduction: Individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) often suffer from speech impairments and dysphagia due to impaired motor control of the tongue and lips. Aim: To investigate the effect of singing on peak flow, speech- and swallowing abilities in individuals with CP. Method: Ten adults with CP received one-to-one singing lessons by a professional singing teacher for one hour twice a week for 6 months. Methods: The peak flow, swallowing-, speech-, and eating abilities were investigated pre, and after 3 months and 6 months of singing. Results: The meal analysis revealed that an average of eleven factors was improved after 6 months of singing. Nine out of ten participants improved their pronunciation of the letter “N” and seven participants improved their pronunciation of the letter “G”. The singing lessons increased the peak flow significantly (p = 0.02;Pre = 246 ± 36, 3 months = 287 ± 34, and 6 months = 336 ± 48). Self-reported difficulties on a 1 - 10 scale reduced significantly for both swallowing (p = 0.039) and speaking (p = 0.049). Conclusion: 6 months of singing lessons improve the peak flow, speech-, swallowing- and eating abilities in adults with CP. The present study indicates that singing is a very promising intervention for the treatment of speech and eating impairments in individuals with CP.