Nobel is a pictographic language based on some 120 basic signs and many arrows of different shape that are mutually combined. It is named after Alfred Nobel (18331896), Swedish chemist and industrialist, inventor of dynamite, who left most of his fortune to a foundation that annually gives awards to individuals whose work is characterized as greatest benefit to mankind, known as Nobel Prizes. Besides the awards for sciences and literature significantly, Alfred Nobel included, among others, a prize for peace (that besides individuals, also organizations may obtain). Although it would be utopian to believe that human conflicts could be avoided if communication tools would improve, the emergence of universal languages certainly cannot make the situation worse! Universal languages are a communication tool, which makes it possible for people of no common language to communicate. They are graphic, but they should be distinguished from picture writings, which only passively offer information on some event or give messages. Universal languages have more similarity with the sign languages that are used for people who lost hearing or the sign language of American Plains Indians, who spoke different languages and could communicate by sign language that they developed. However, written language has some advantages over hand sign languages in that one can communicate at a great distance, particularly today in the age of fax and computer communications, and that one can leave messages for posterity. This is not the place to argue for or against the promise of written sign languages. Graphic (written) sign languages exist today, and the best known are Chinese characters used in China and Japan. The problem with Chinese characters is that there are too many characters and it is difficult to learn so many. It takes years for children in China and Japan to learn so many different characters, and the task would be even harder for grown people to learn if they have not done this when young. Nobel is designed to remove this difficulty and is based on the following requirements: 1. SMALL NUMBER OF BASIC SIGNS 2. SIGNS SHOULD BE EASY TO RECOGNIZE 3. SIGNS SHOULD BE EASY TO REPRODUCE 4. COMBINATIONS LIMITED TO THREE SIGNS 5. COMPLEMENTARY We have already mentioned that Nobel uses about 120 basic signs, which can be viewed as a small number, particularly in view of over 100 signs of Nobel that are so obvious that they can be easily absorbed. The other requirements are also very important. There are many signs that can be easily recognized, but in order to be acceptable for Nobel, they also need to be easily reproduced, because that will facilitate communication. Also, when making combinations of signs, one has to make some restriction in order to maintain clarity, so we decided to have no more than three signs combined into single word. Finally, the last requirement, that of complementarities, needs some explanation. Besides having signs that one can easily recognize and easily draw, one needs some structure to be embedded into composition of signs that facilitates one to remember and learn signs easily. We refer to this structure as complementary or, broadly speaking, associational, and what it implies is that words and objects that are related should have related signs. Thus, for example, pairs of words like man-woman, cat-dog, coffee-tea, good-bad, love-hate, etc., should have signs that are in some opposition, while words like smoke-flame-fire, tree-wood-forest, water-sea-ocean, good-better-best should have signs that are in competition. With this in mind when one sees and learns the basic signs, the meaning of many combinations of signs can be in advance anticipated. This helps one to learn Nobel rather fast; not months, not weeks, perhaps not even days, but a couple of hours may suffice that one may learn hundreds and hundreds of words. In this respect, Nobel may be unique among languages written, spoken of,

The three-volume set LNCS 8009-8011 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, UAHCI 2013, held as part of the 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2013, held in Las Vegas, USA in July 2013, jointly with 12 other thematically similar conferences. The total of 1666 papers and 303 posters presented at the HCII 2013 conferences was carefully reviewed and selected from 5210 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The total of 230 contributions included in the UAHCI proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this three-volume set. The 78 papers included in this volume are organized in the following topical sections: age-related issues, human vision in universal access, emotions and persuasion in universal access, design for autistic spectrum disorders, cognitive issues for universal access, universal access to the Web and social communities.

Now included at the end of the book is a link for a web-based program, PDFs and MP3 sound files for each chapter. Over 2,100 pages ... Developed by I Corps Foreign Language Training Center Fort Lewis, WA For the Special Operations Forces Language Office United States Special Operations Command LANGUAGE TRAINING The ability to speak a foreign language is a core unconventional warfare skill and is being incorporated throughout all phases of the qualification course. The students will receive their language assignment after the selection phase where they will receive a language starter kit that allows them to begin language training while waiting to return to Fort Bragg for Phase II. The 3rd Bn, 1st SWTG (A) is responsible for all language training at the USAJFKSWCS. The Special Operations Language Training (SOLT) is primarily a performance-oriented language course. Students are trained in one of ten core languages with enduring regional application and must show proficiency in speaking, listening and reading. A student receives language training throughout the Pipeline. In Phase IV, students attend an 8 or 14 week language blitz depending upon the language they are slotted in. The general purpose of the course is to provide each student with the ability to communicate in a foreign language. For successful completion of the course, the student must achieve at least a 1/1/1 or higher on the Defense Language Proficiency Test in two of the three graded areas; speaking, listening and reading. Table of Contents Introduction Introduction Lesson 1 People and Geography Lesson 2 Living and Working Lesson 3 Numbers, Dates, and Time Lesson 4 Daily Activities Lesson 5 Meeting the Family Lesson 6 Around Town Lesson 7 Shopping Lesson 8 Eating Out Lesson 9 Customs, and Courtesies in the Home Lesson 10 Around the House Lesson 11 Weather and Climate Lesson 12 Personal Appearance Lesson 13 Transportation Lesson 14 Travel Lesson 15 At School Lesson 16 Recreation and Leisure Lesson 17 Health and the Human Body Lesson 18 Political and International Topics in the News Lesson 19 The Military Lesson 20 Holidays and Traditions

Whether through speech, writing, or other methods, language and communication has been an essential tool for human cooperation and development. Across the world, language varies drastically based on culture and disposition. Even in areas in which the language is standardized, it is common to have many varieties of dialects. It is essential to understand applied linguistics and language practices to create equitable spaces for all dialects and languages. The Research Anthology on Applied Linguistics and Language Practices discusses in-depth the current global research on linguistics from the development of language to the practices in language acquisition. It further discusses the social factors behind language and dialect as well as cultural identity found behind unique traits in language and dialect. Covering topics such as linguistic equity, phonology, and sociolinguistics, this major reference work is an indispensable resource for linguists, pre-service teachers, libraries, students and educators of higher education, educational administration, ESL organizations, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

The primary goal of the volume on "Visual Communication" is to provide a collection of high quality, accessible papers that offer an overview of the different academic approaches to Visual Communication, the different theoretical perspectives on which they are based, the methods of analysis used and the different media and genre that have come under analysis. There is no such existing volume that draws together this range of closely related material generally found in much less related areas of research, including semiotics, art history, design, and new media theory. The volume has a total of 34 individual chapters that are organized into two sections: theories and methods, and areas of visual analysis. The chapters are all written by quality theorists and researchers, with a view that the research should be accessible to non-specialists in their own field while at the same time maintaining a high quality of work. The volume contains an introduction, which plots and locates the different approaches contained in it within broader developments and history of approaches to visual communication across different disciplines as each has attempted to define its terrain sometimes through unique concepts and methods sometimes through those borrowed and modified from others.

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Publisher's Weekly "Best Summer Books of 2013" The Daily Beast's "Brainy Summer Beach Reads" The classic literary canon meets the comics artists, illustrators, and other artists who have remade reading in Russ Kick's magisterial, three-volume, full-color The Graphic Canon, volumes 1, 2, and 3. Volume 3 brings to life the literature of the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, including a Sherlock Holmes mystery, an H.G. Wells story, an illustrated guide to the Beat writers, a one-act play from Zora Neale Hurston, a disturbing meditation on Naked Lunch, Rilke's soul-stirring Letters to a Young Poet, Anaïs Nin's diaries, the visions of Black Elk, the heroin classic The Man With the Golden Arm (published four years before William Burroughs' Junky), and the postmodernism of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Kathy Acker, Raymond Carver, and Donald Barthelme. The towering works of modernism are here--T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," Yeats's "The Second Coming" done as a magazine spread, Heart of Darkness, stories from Kafka, The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, and his short story "Araby" from Dubliners, rare early work from Faulkner and Hemingway (by artists who have drawn for Marvel), and poems by Gertrude Stein and Edna St. Vincent Millay. You'll also find original comic versions of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, Flannery O'Connor, and Saki (manga style), plus adaptations of Lolita (and everyone said it couldn't be done!), The Age of Innocence, Siddhartha and Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Last Exit to Brooklyn, J.G. Ballard's Crash, and photo-dioramas for Animal Farm and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Feast your eyes on new full-page illustrations for 1984, Brave New World, Waiting for Godot, One Hundred Years of Solitude,The Bell Jar, On the Road, Lord of the Flies, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and three Borges stories. Robert Crumb's rarely seen adaptation of Nausea captures Sartre's existential dread. Dame Darcy illustrates Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece, Blood Meridian, universally considered one of the most brutal novels ever written and long regarded as unfilmable by Hollywood. Tara Seibel, the only female artist involved with the Harvey Pekar Project, turns in an exquisite series of illustrations for The Great Gatsby. And then there's the moment we've been waiting for: the first graphic adaptation from Kurt Vonnegut's masterwork, Slaughterhouse-Five. Among many other gems.

The Reader's Guide to the History of Science looks at the literature of science in some 550 entries on individuals (Einstein), institutions and disciplines (Mathematics), general themes (Romantic Science) and central concepts (Paradigm and Fact). The history of science is construed widely to include the history of medicine and technology as is reflected in the range of disciplines from which the international team of 200 contributors are drawn.