Emergency Architecture in Lebanon: the Gateway to what is required from us for the Future of Emergency Architecture

Throughout the years, tents have dominated the scene when it comes to emergency architecture, what is the reason behind it? Many architects and engineers have tried to put forward alternatives, and even though many ideas were brilliant they have failed to overcome the dominance of tents. This fact question whether we should really try to give alternatives or whether all our efforts should be focused elsewhere? The following entangles this argument through a series of researches and site visits performed in Lebanon. Keywords: Emergency architecture, Phase II, refugee camps, refugee settlements, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine.

Question tags in Cameroon English

Although English is one of the two official languages in Cameroon, it is seldom used out of official circles where indigenous languages, French, and Pidgin English reign supreme (Jikong & Koenig, 1983). This has made the language a matter of concern for teachers, learners, and researchers. An aspect of the language which has so far been little investigated, but which is significant to English proficiency, is question tags. In fact, question tags contribute tremendously to the flow of language. They are ‘a very conspicuous phenomenon of spoken language’ (Tottie & Hoffman, 2006: 284). These short questions (tags), tagged onto a main statement (the anchor) play an important role in spoken English. While the question tag is taught from Sixième to Terminale (Grade 8 to Grade 13, i.e. the first to last years of secondary education in the Francophone subsystem of education), and from primary to secondary school in the Anglophone subsystem of education in Cameroon, researchers are still to question its teaching against the backdrop of its actual use in a country where the nativisation process of English is generally agreed upon (Schneider, 2009). Also, given that the canonical ‘type of tag question with reversed or constant polarity, (. . .) is typical of English’ (Tottie & Hoffman, 2006: 283), its teaching (textbooks focus solely on question tags with reversed or constant polarity) in a non-native setting like Cameroon is likely to foretell a conscious or unconscious desire to keep a certain standard of English. If one concurs with Schneider (2009) that Cameroon is on Phase Three of the Dynamic model (at least in the Anglophone part of the country) – that is, Nativisation where ‘structural nativization has made substantial progress’ (p. 298) – then keeping a native-like standard on school programmes (Ministry of Secondary Education, 2014), textbooks (see for illustration the English textbook Forbin et al., 2019), and official examinations would be likely to indicate some contradictions as per the apparent desire to cut the umbilical cord with the former colonial power.

Dialogue processes in online information seeking and sharing: a study of an asynchronous discussion group

Introduction. This study elaborates the picture of dialogical information interaction by examining asynchronous dialogue processes constitutive of information seeking and sharing in online forums. Method. Descriptive quantitative analysis and qualitative content analysis of fifty discussion threads with 1326 messages downloaded from Google Groups uk.d-i-y forum. Analysis. To examine the dialogue processes, eleven categories of dialogue acts were defined. These acts include, for example, initial fact question, initial opinion answer, specifying opinion question, complementary fact answer and disagreement. Based on the temporally sensitive nature of such acts, the dialogue process was approached in two phases: initiation and elaboration. Results. The dialogue process at the initiation phase occurs in two ways: responding the initial question, and clarifying the initial question before answering. The elaboration phase is based on a more complex interplay of specifying questions, complementary answers, as well as answer agreements and disagreements. Due to this characteristic, the degree of dialogicality is higher at the elaboration phase. Conclusions. Dialogue is a fundamental constituent of information interaction. Due to its protean nature, the dynamics of asynchronous dialogue processes are difficult to capture in detail. The empirical research settings may be elaborated further by drawing on the potential of novel methods such as digital conversation analysis.

Incorporating Neuroimaging into Cognitive Assessment

All traditional neuropsychological assessment techniques emerged in an era prior to modern neuroimaging. In fact, question-answer/paper-and-pencil test origins that gained traction with Alfred Binet in 1905 remain the same core techniques today. Indeed, Binet’s efforts began the era of standardized human metrics designed to assess a broad spectrum of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functions and abilities. During the early part of the 20th century, the concept of an intellectual quotient expressed as a standard score with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 also initiated the era of quantitative descriptions of mental and emotional functioning (Anastasi, 1968; Stern, 1912). Other descriptive statistical metrics were applied to human measurement, including scaled, percentile, T-score, and z-score statistics. Statistical measures became part of the assessment lexicon and each possessed strength as well as weakness for descriptive purposes, but together proved to be immensely effective for communicating test findings and inferring average and above or below the norm performances. In turn, descriptive statistical methods became the cornerstone for describing neuropsychological findings, typically reported by domain of functioning (memory, excutive, language, etc.; Cipolotti & Warrington, 1995; Lezak, Howieson, Bigler, & Tranel, 2012). As much as psychology and medicine have incorporated descriptive statistics into research and clinical application, a major focus of both disciplines also has been binary classification—normal versus abnormal. This dichotomization recognizes some variability and individual differences within a test score or laboratory procedure, but at some point the clinician makes the binary decision of normal or abnormal. In the beginnings of neuroimaging, which are discussed more thoroughly below, interpretation of computed tomographic (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans mostly was approached in this manner. Although lots of information was available from CT and MRI images, if nothing obviously abnormal was seen, the radiological conclusion merely stated in the Impression section, “Normal CT (or MRI) of the brain,” with no other qualification (or quantification) of why the findings were deemed normal other than the image appeared that way. Until recently, quantification of information in an image required hand editing and was excruciatingly time consuming.

Theater and its Social Uses: Machiavellis Mandragola and the Spectacle of Infamy*

Long seen as a play that celebrates the new-found freedom of its female protagonist, Mandragola may in fact question the very possibility of theatrical "liberation. "Drawing on the foundational myth central to Renaissance thinking about theater, the abduction of the Sabine women, this essay shows how Machiavelli endeavored to make his play a discomfitting experience for characters and audience alike. This conception of comedy as social trap both challenged humanistic notions of the ideal relationship between theater and the city, and accentuated the surveillant norms inherent in humanists'understanding of the role of the stage in society.