The Malay question in Indonesia

Thinking about links and fractures in political and historical thoughts about Malaya and Indonesia, one central question comes to mind: Why “ke-Melayu-an” (Malayness) did not become a national project in Indonesia? Given the facts that there have been emotional and material entanglements between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, and that in Malaysia and Singapore, Malayan consciousness had a clear political context, it is important to revisit the notion of the Melayu identity in Indonesia. This article sheds some light on this issue, bringing language and political identity into vision. By looking at trajectories of Malay and Malayness in Indonesia, it aims to raise interest in a new methodology of studying political thoughts about national projects in Asia, starting with formulating central questions worthy of further pursuit.     

Association of the 12669G>A Apolipoprotein B Gene Polymorphism with Apo-B Serum Level and Lipid Profile in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease Comparing with Individuals Without Coronary Artery Disease in Zanjan Population of Iran

Atherosclerosis is a pathologic disorder which has an important role in the occurrence of coronary heart disease. It is determined as a focal, inflammatory proliferative response to several types of endothelial damage. Apolipoprotein B which is a requirement in the sustenance of cholesterol homeostasis, and is the major protein component of low density lipoprotein, characterized by multitude polymorphic sites, one of which (12669G>A) is related to the levels of serum lipid profiles, coronary artery disease and/or myocardial infarction. One Common polymorphism which is more important in this process is 12669G>A that is appraised in this research. We recruited 80 patients from the Mousavi hospital, Zanjan, Iran, diagnosed with coronary artery disease by the clinician on the basis of clinical symptoms, echocardiogram result, and angiography. Seventy-seven healthy individuals without any evident symptoms of Coronary stenosis and any past history of the disease were taken as controls from the general population. We carried out PCR using specific primers. Then, we digested PCR product by RFLP. Lipid parameters by biochemical methods and Apolipoprotein B serum level by immunoturbidometry method were done. Genotype frequencies for 12669G>A polymorphism were determined: 55 % R+R+, 45 % R+R? in case group, and 55.8 R+R+, 44.2 % R+R? in controls. The R?R? genotype was not seen. There was no significant relationship between this polymorphism and the risk of Coronary stenosis (P = 0.6). In the present study, higher plasma levels of cholesterol and low density lipoproteins in the subjects with R+R? genotype were found while there was no association between this polymorphism and coronary stenosis with ≥50 % in the Zanjan population.     

Two-Sample Non-parametric Detectors Using Dependent Samples

The performance of two-sample non-parametric detectors using dependent samples is considered. It is shown that in the situation in which square-law envelope detection is employed, the signals to be detected fluctuate in accordance with a chi-square distribution and the background interference is additive Gaussian noise; the two-sample Generalized Sign (GS), Mann-Whitney (MW), Modified Savage (MS) and Modified Rank Square (MRS) detectors have superior asymptotic processing times to those that are obtained when independent samples are used. Also, it is shown that in addition to the advantage of improved performance, detection using dependent samples can have implementation advantages as compared with detection based on the use of independent samples.     

Design and implementation of an intelligent virtual environment for improving speaking and listening skills

In this paper, we present an intelligent architecture, called intelligent virtual environment for language learning, with embedded pedagogical agents for improving listening and speaking skills of non-native English language learners. The proposed architecture integrates virtual environments into the Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning. This architecture supports visual, auditory, and haptic channels of interaction. It allows pedagogical ideas about language skills to be implemented and validated with a minimum design time. Moreover, we design a computational model to evaluate learner's proficiency level, and an automatic adaptation mechanism which adjusts to the learner's learning curve. We have implemented two scenarios based on the proposed architecture to teach learners how to communicate in public places such as airports and TV stores. Inputs to this system include learner's speech and hand motion, and outputs include graphical scenes, force feedback, and speech by a few embodied agents. Throughout interactions, agents discover the proficiency level of the learner and customize the level of communication complexity accordingly. The system is tested on 10 subjects. Experimental results show 14% increase in the number of proper replies, 3% decrease in grammatical errors, 16% decrease in pronunciation duration, and 11% increase in learners' proficiency level within three trials.     

Anti-oscillation and chaos control of the fractional-order brushless DC motor system via adaptive echo state networks

This paper proposes anti-oscillation and chaos control scheme for the fractional-order brushless DC motor system wherein there exist unknown dynamics, immeasurable states and chaotic oscillation. Aimed at immeasurable states, the high-gain observers with fast convergence are presented to obtain the information of system states. To compensate uncertainties existing in the dynamic system, a finite-time echo state network with a weight is proposed to approximate uncertain dynamics while its weight is tuned by a fractional-order adaptive law online. Meanwhile a fractional-order filter is introduced to deal with the repeated derivative of the backstepping. Based on the fractional-order Lyapunov stability criterion, the anti-oscillation and chaos control scheme integrated with a high-gain observer, an echo state network and a filter are proposed by using recursive steps of backstepping. The proposed scheme guarantees the boundedness of all signals of the closed-loop system in the sense of global asymptotic stability, and also suppresses chaotic oscillation. Finally, the effectiveness of our scheme is demonstrated by simulation results.     

Religious education and hermeneutics: the case of teaching about Islam

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to do three things: the first is an exploration of the ways in which Islam is presented in an essentialist way (with a focus on religious education (RE) in England and Wales), leading to stereotypes and unsubstantiated generalisations that are then embedded in resources and agreed syllabi, secondly, it provides a critique of essentialism, and finally a case is made for the role of hermeneutics in the teaching and learning of Islam. We argue that a hermeneutical approach is a sound way to both conceptualise the phenomenon of Islam and a pedagogical opening to make sense of it, that may help overcome some of the weaknesses of the current ways of teaching about Islam.     

On generalized rolling of golf balls considering an offset center of mass and rolling resistance: a study of putting

This paper seeks to address the implications on putting a golf ball with an off-center mass by analyzing the effect of unbalanced mass of ball on its impact and subsequent rolling. We present the general formulation of a rigid golf ball rolling with slip that is able to transition to rolling friction on an arbitrary surface. Particular attention is given to the effects of the offset center of mass on the golf ball’s path. An experimental setup based on a USGA Stimpmeter is used to calibrate the position of contact point as the ball rolls on the green. The trajectories of the ball due to the mass imbalance were studied by numerically solving the equations of motion during putting. Theoretical predictions show that a mass imbalance has little effect on the launch conditions of the ball. However, on a level green a mass offset center of 0.2 % of the ball’s radius can impact the path of the ball with the consequences of missing the hole in a 5.8 m putt. Changing golf ball trajectories with mass offset center has implications on the development of balls and putting.     

Synset expansion on translation graph for automatic wordnet construction

Research on clustering algorithms in synonymy graphs of a single language yields promising results, however, this idea is not yet explored in a multilingual setting. Nevertheless, moving the problem to a multilingual translation graph enables the use of more clues and techniques not possible in a monolingual synonymy graph. This article explores the potential of sense induction methods in a massively multilingual translation graph. For this purpose, the performance of graph clustering methods in synset detection are investigated. In the context of translation graphs, the use of existing Wordnets in different languages is an important clue for synset detection which cannot be utilized in a monolingual setting. Casting the problem into an unsupervised synset expansion task rather than a clustering or community detection task improves the results substantially. Furthermore, instead of a greedy unsupervised expansion algorithm guided by heuristics, we devise a supervised learning algorithm able to learn synset expansion patterns from the words in existing Wordnets to achieve superior results. As the training data is formed of already existing Wordnets, as opposed to previous work, manual labeling is not required. To evaluate our methods, Wordnets for Slovenian, Persian, German and Russian are built from scratch and compared to their manually built Wordnets or labeled test-sets. Results reveal a clear improvement over 2 state-of-the-art algorithms targeting massively multilingual Wordnets and competitive results with Wordnet construction methods targeting a single language. The system is able to produce Wordnets from scratch with a Wordnet base concept coverage ranging from 20% to 88% for 51 languages and expands existing Wordnets up to 30%.