110 research outputs found
The 1961 Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire and the making of modern Singapore
No full textBy 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore
Chinese literary works translated into Baba Malay: a bibliographical study
No full textAnalyses 68 unique titles of Baba translated works published between 1889 and 1950. The titles are held in the libraries of the University of Malaya (UM), Science University Malaysia (USM), National University of Malaysia (UKM), the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP), National University of Singapore (NUS), National Library of Singapore (NLS) and the British Library (BL). The results reveal three periods of active publication of Baba translated works. A total of 18 works were translated before World War I, followed by 10 just after the war, 39 titles were published before the break of the World War II and 1 was identified in 1950. There were 103 persons involved in the 68 translated works, some of whom are responsible for more than one title. The most prominent translators were Chan Kim Boon, Wan Boon Seng, Seow Chin San and Lee Seng Poh. Some of the translators were also be editors, illustrators or editors. There were 31 publishers and 21 printing presses involved, all were located in Singapore. The most active publishers were Wan Boon Seng, Kim Seck Chy Press and Nanyang Romanised Malay Book Co. The translated works mainly cover historical classical Chinese stories, chivalrous stories, romances, folklore and legends. The titles were priced between 10 cents to 2 dollars in Straits currency. The University of Malaya Library held the largest number of unique title (62) out of which 15 were unique titles
Sustainable Design for Unpiled-Raft Foundation Structure
No full textAbstractThis abstract forms Part 1 of 4 of full report on research work: “Bearing and settlement behaviour of piled-raft in soft clay.” The convention approach on piled-raft design tends to ignore load bearing and settlement contribution from the raft slab. Thus, selecting an effective raft size taking into effect of the soil-structure interaction environment is often neglected and this resulted with conservative design, expensive piled-raft foundation structure, depleting of resources and ineffective construction – in all, expensive and non-sustainable work This report evaluates on the conventional design approach, problems and limitations faced and propose possible alternative design approach to derive an optimum raft size which are both effective and practical based on the load bearing and settlement criteria. The model would then be used on piled-raft foundation in the next phase of research work to study any significance contribution from the raft and it level of contribution through similar parametrics. Analyses work and charts done would be used to support the selection of the most efficiency raft size model through the use of FEM geotechnical software in both short and long terms design consideration with structure founded on homogeneous normal consolidated soft clay overlaying a thickness of firm clay soil strata. As such, all presentations in this paper would only be encompassing solely on unpiled-raft foundation design under undrained condition since clay soil is expected to consolidate with times and gets firmer and stronger in long term. A sustainable design chart together with self-explained flowchart to serve as quick-reference design guide is developed for completeness
Feasibility study on the fabrication and manufacture of liquid flat-plate solar collectors using non-metallic materials
No full text22 p.Conventional liquid solar collectors made from copper sheets and tubes are generally expensive to fabricate besides being bulky and heavy. This high cost results from the use of expensive materials and labour intensive manufacturing techniques. Hence it is unlikely that solar collector cost reductions will occur without radical change in collector manufacture.RP 21/8
Online Forum Discussion: Making Sense of How Knowledge is Woven in a Tapestry of Social Interactions and Collaboration
No full textThis paper describes how students in a wholly online master course interacted and collaborated in constructing knowledge through forum discussions. This examination of roles and behaviours of forum participants is an attempt by the author, who was the facilitator, to understand how her students engaged in constructing knowledge, rather than to test existing theories on online discussions. For each thread in the forum, an overall analysis of its life, captivity, magnitude and period of interaction was first analysed. Two discussion threads with the highest value for life of thread, captivity and magnitude were then examined in detail. A visual representation of the network of communication among participants was created to reveal the strength of relationships and structure of social network. Then, in trying to get a richer snapshot of the postings, three different analysis tools namely, Johnson and Johnson’s categories of behaviours in collaborative learning situations, Fahy’s Transcript Analysis Tool as well as Gunawardena, Lowe and Anderson’s constructivist knowledge creation phases, were used. An interesting finding is that even with minimal facilitator intervention in the forum, discovery and exploration of dissonance occurred and this had led to the negotiation of meaning, testing and modification of proposed synthesis of knowledge, and finally, application of newly constructed knowledge. Other findings from the analyses of the two threads include (1) there was much collaborative behaviour among participants in terms of contributing to discussions and seeking input, (2) there were several instances where participants were observed to connect what they had discussed in other threads by referring to those postings, and (3) several participants displayed reflective thinking in revealing their beliefs, doubts, and their reasoning.(Author's abstract
Polytechnic learners’ perception on pronunciation acquisition via questionnaire administration today
No full textThis study examines perceptions of learners on pronunciation acquisition, learning phonetic
transcriptions and their sounds associations amongst Polytechnic Kuala Terengganu
Learners. This study was carried-out amongst semester one diploma of Electronics and
Electrical Engineering learners in Kuala Terengganu Polytechnic, Terengganu, Malaysia.
This study also hopes to show that by learning to recognise and read phonetic symbols
learners will be able to overcome any pronunciation disability using the dictionary. This
research follows the quasi- experimental design of a control-group A and treatment group B
selected randomly doing a pre-test and post-test. The treatment of explicit instruction of
phonetic transcriptions for 45 hours was given only to the experimental group. This study
focuses on the analysis of oral test answers by learners. Some of the challenges identified in
the acquisition of pronunciation are mother tongue interference, mispronunciation because
spelling does not reflect pronunciation, unintelligibility and miscommunication and the lack
of confidence to speak the English Language. Whilst factors that affect pronunciation
acquisition are mother tongue, exposure, motivation, students’ perception, ways of learning,
which English to speak and others. However, it was discovered that phonetic instruction of transcriptions and their sounds’ association improves pronunciation competence. Some of
the implications of this study are aimed at ELT academicians and practitioners to apply the
method used in this study to up-grade the standard of pronunciation proficiency and a
suggestion that the learning of pronunciation using phonetic symbols should be taught
earlier in their education
Persistent Dengue Infection in an Immunosuppressed Patient Reveals the Roles of Humoral and Cellular Immune Responses in Virus Clearance
No full text10.1016/j.chom.2019.10.005265601-605.e
Transbronchial forcep and cryobiopsy of peripheral cavitary lung lesion under R-EBUS guidance in tuberculous endemic setting
No full textFeasibility of manual bronchial branch reading technique in navigating conventional rEBUS bronchoscopy in the evaluation of peripheral pulmonary lesion
No full textSuccessful treatment of pyopneumothorax with bronchopleural fistula using endobronchial Watanabe spigots
No full text- …
