20,496 research outputs found
Oral history of Regine Laforest-Sharif
No full textRegine Laforest-Sharif is Associate Director of Community Living at Johns Hopkins University, a position she had held for 23 years at the time of this recording. In addition to her position, Laforest-Sharif has served in various service and leadership roles at the University, including time as President of the Black Faculty and Staff Association. Laforest-Sharif discusses her background growing up in a predominantly Haitian community in Queens New York, her move to Baltimore, and her career at Hopkins, with a special focus on her experience as a Black employee
Solmaz Sharif Literary Arts Institute Reading
No full textSolmaz Sharif, an award-winning writer and poet, will conduct a public reading at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16, in the Colman Theater at the Benedicta Arts Center, College of Saint Benedict.
Sharif will be discussing her first book, “Look,” which was published in 2016 by Graywolf Press and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Her reading is free and open to the public.
“Look” asks readers to see the ongoing costs of war through the loss of human lives abetted by the insidious use of everyday speech “weaponized” as military terminology. The title “Look,” for example, is derived from its military usage as the period during which a mine can be exploded.
In this virtuosic array of poems interspersed with terms from a dictionary used by the Department of Defense, Sharif turns the language back on itself to tackle issues of deep consequence around the world. Her poems reconstruct the experience for many, as they watched their loved ones perish as a result of war and conflict.
“Look” was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2016; A Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2016; the Washington Post’s Best Poetry Collection of 2016; one of The New Yorker’s Books We Loved in 2016; and the San Francisco Chronicle’s 100 Recommended Books of 2016.
Sharif was born in Istanbul to Iranian parents. The family immigrated to California when she was 11 years old.
After studying poetry at the University of California Berkeley, she received her master’s degree in fine arts from New York University. Sharif is currently a lecturer at Stanford University.
Sharif will also be residency Nov. 15-16 at CSB and Saint John’s University. Her residency is sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute (LAI) at CSB and by the Manitou Fund.
The LAI is a unique organization, founded in 1997, to foster creative writing, publishing and interaction between students and writers. LAI brings nationally recognized authors to the college for a visiting writers series (Writers Writing), promotes literary events, holds conferences (Inside Books), supports publications (S. Mariella Gable Prize), and encourages the artistry of fine letterpress (Welle Book Arts Studio).
With its local and national partners, such as Graywolf Press, LAI is able to bring writers and their work together with readers on campus, in Minnesota and beyond
Advancing the state of the art in the modelling and simulation of information systems evaluation
No full textIt is widely accepted that Information Systems Evaluation (ISE) is a powerful and useful technique
that can be used to assess IT/IS investments in an a-priori or a-posteriori sense. Traditional
approaches to ISE have tended to centre upon financial and management accounting frameworks,
seeking to reconcile tangible and intangible costs, benefits, risks and value factors. Such techniques,
however, do not provide the IS researcher or practitioner with further insight or appreciation of any
inherent and implicit inter-relationships, in the investment justification process. Thus, this paper
outlines and discusses via a taxonomy and resulting classification, alternative and complementary
approaches that can be applied to ISE from the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Operational
Research (OR) and Management Science (MS). The paper subsequently concludes that such
approaches can be potentially used by researchers and practitioners in the field, as a basis for
carrying out further research in the field of applied ISE
A nonlinear variational method for signal segmentation and reconstruction using level set algorithm
No full textA nonlinear functional is considered in this letter for segmentation and noise removal of piecewise continuous signals containing binary information contaminated with Gaussian noise. A discontinuity is defined as points in time scale that separates two signal segments with different amplitude spectra. Segmentation and noise removal of a piecewise continuous signal are obtained by deriving equations minimising the nonlinear functional. An algorithm based on the level set method is employed to implement the solutions minimising the functional. The proposed method is robust in noisy signals and can avoid local minima
Nonlinear optimisation method for image segmentation and noise reduction using geometrical intrinsic properties
No full textThis paper considers the optimisation of a nonlinear functional for image segmentation and noise reduction. Equations optimising this functional are derived and employed to detect edges using geometrical intrinsic properties such as metric and Riemann curvature tensor of a smooth differentiable surface approximating the original image. Images are then smoothed using a Helmholtz type partial differential equation. The proposed approach is shown to be very efficient and robust in the presence of noise, and the reported results demonstrate better performance than the conventional derivative based edge detectors
Shifting Paradigm of Governance in the Natural Resources Management of Bangladesh: A Centralist to Pluralistic Approach in the Forest Protected Areas Management
No full textEstablishment of a protected area (PA) is a key global conservation strategy aimed to protect the Earth’s imperiled biodiversity and ecosystems. Globally, PA networks now cover nearly 15% of the terrestrial ecosystem. Despite the importance of PAs in protecting declining biodiversity and unique ecosystems, many of them are in critical condition due to poor governance, thus functioning below the expected level. Moreover, in many developing countries, the PA coverage is lower than the global standard. Recognizing their contemporary role in conservation, governments have recently agreed to expand the global PA coverage to 17% by the year 2020 (Aichi Target 11). This book with case studies from around the world provides an overview of PA governance, institutional mechanisms, conservation benefits, limitations and challenges associated with their respective policy discourse, integrated management, and functional attributes. Chapter One provides a general overview with an introduction to the chapters, while Chapters Two through Nine present various attributes of protected area management, from policy to governance, conservation to ecotourism, and land-use/cover change to impact on climate. Protected areas will continue to play an important role in conservation and protection of biodiversity and wild habitats, particularly in countries where population pressure and habitat loss are high. Regular intervention, political commitment, and effective governance are essential for the sustainability of PAs across the globe. In this book, we also attempted to shed some light on future developmental clues for the sustainable management and monitoring of PAs worldwide. This book will be useful to managers of protected areas, conservation scientists, policymakers, students and researchers working on biodiversity conservation, natural resources, and environmental management. [Book Synopsis
Geometrical-based algorithm for variational segmentation and smoothing of vector-valued images
No full textAn optimisation method based on a nonlinear functional is considered for segmentation and smoothing of vector-valued images. An edge-based approach is proposed to initially segment the image using geometrical properties such as metric tensor of the linearly smoothed image. The nonlinear functional is then minimised for each segmented region to yield the smoothed image. The functional is characterised with a unique solution in contrast with the Mumford–Shah functional for vector-valued images. An operator for edge detection is introduced as a result of this unique solution. This operator is analytically calculated and its detection performance and localisation are then compared with those of the DroGoperator. The implementations are applied on colour images as examples of vector-valued images, and the results demonstrate robust performance in noisy environments
Música em Pessoa
No full textDesde o primeiro encontro, no Coral da UFRGS, até a montagem do espetáculo "Do limão, a limonada", a vida tratou de ora aproximar, ora afastar as cantoras e instrumentistas Kiti Santos e Simone Rasslan. No Música em Pessoa desta edição, elas contam essa história e apresentam um pouco do repertório do show em que problematizam o sentido de amizade!Música de concert
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