This paper primarily focuses on the description of the results of a study conducted on ten Chinese university students ESL learners to investigate  whether or not cultural context has a significant impact on university students’ ability to remember and understand English figurative idioms as part of English as a Second Language instruction in China. Since Idiom  is a kind of language block which concord rich cultural elements and the figurative idiom whose meaning cannot be easy inferred by the usual meaning of its constituent elements, so the present study was based on the relationship between culture and language, the origins of the idioms and their cultural connotations. As some scholars’ studies have shown before, knowing the origins and the source domains of the idioms can enhance the learners motivation, then their comprehension and retention of idioms are improved. The present study also demonstrates that the cultural context can facilitate learners understanding and memorization of the English figurative idiom.

The web provides a lot of fluid information but this information changes, moves, and even disappears over time. Bookmark lists, portals, and paths are collections where the building blocks are web pages, which are susceptible to these changes. A lot of research, both in industry and in academia, focuses on organizing this vast amount of data. In this thesis, I present context-based algorithms for measuring changes to a document. The methods proposed use other documents in a collection as the context for evaluating changes in the web pages. These metrics will be used in maintaining paths as the individual pages in paths change. This approach will enhance the evaluations of change made by the currently existing Path Manager, in the Walden's Paths project that is being developed in the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries at Texas A&M University.

The NEXUS Portal provides an in-depth profile of the research and achievements of NEXUS on a quarterly basis. This special issue is dedicated to youth health.

At the beginning of the Edo period (1600-1868 CE) the Japanese Tokugawa shōgunate enforced the famous closed country policy. During the period of isolation that would ensue until the Meiji Restoration, mathematics flourished like never before. The new tradition that arose was rich and diverse, with mathematics manifesting itself through different practitioners in many different ways. And, for the first time in Japanese history, mathematics began to diverge from Chinese practice, developing a uniquely Japanese identity. Because of this, we therefore can look to Edo mathematics with the expectation that it can especially clearly illustrate cultural variability in the practice of mathematics if it is the case that there exists such. The present thesis examines whether cultural-contextual factors from within the isolated Edo environment impacted individual practitioners of mathematics to result in the variation and uniqueness that appeared. Also, it highlights and addresses what the consequences might be for historians, philosophers, and mathematicians if such an influence did occur.

The use of the expectation marker actually in spoken conversation is an interesting topic. This study investigates the different functions of actually and the importance of context in eight spoken conversations from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. The chosen conversations are different when it comes to social factors like the participants’ age or gender. The interactions are studied using Karin Aijmer’s suggested functions of actually. Aijmer divides the expectation marker into two major functions: contrastive and emphatic. Basically, the contrastive actually functions as an opposition between points of views, and the empathic actually is used to justify or explain an earlier statement. The method used for the study is of a qualitative character as I study the interactions thoroughly both by listening to the conversations as well as studying the available transcript versions of the interactions. Overall, the study shows that emphatic actually is most common in the data used, and it is mainly used to explain or justify something or as a marker of a participant’s style of speech. In other words, actually is more often used as a way to underline an utterance rather than to correct or make a contrast to another participant’s statement. Actually is often used as a marker of style, a way for a speaker to signal or mark a specific style of speech. All of the conversations are taken from everyday life and should therefore be considered unprepared. When it comes to context it seems as if actually is more frequently used in conversations between participants close in age and who are involved in a closer sort of relationship, for example cousins or a couple in a love relationship. As for gender, actually is used by both women and by men.

Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (ℓ. 46-57)

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed February 15, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 37).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-41).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 21, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-213).

In this report, we demonstrate the applicability and value of the context mediation approach in facilitating the effective and correct use of counter-terrorism intelligence information coming from diverse heterogeneous sources.