490 research outputs found
The Social Construction of the Child Sex Offender Explored by Narrative
No full textThe notion of "child sex offender" provokes aversion, but it may be that it is a social construction. We suggest that a Dominant narrative, in which child sex offenders are constructed as irredeemable, persists, despite the emergence of assumption challenging Alternative narratives. A story completion method was used to elicit themes of Dominant or Alternative narratives, theory-led thematic analysis was used to identify them. The use and analysis of narrative and free-form stories are well established in social research, but remain a novel concept in the study of offenders. The results support the persistence of the Dominant narrative with two notable exceptions. Conclusions centre on utility of the narrative method to examine offender constructions, and the pervasiveness of Dominant narratives. Key Words: Dominant and Alternative Narrative, Social Construction, Child Sex Offenders, and Thematic Analysi
Impact of scour on lateral resistance of wind turbine monopiles: An experimental study
No full textThe majority of offshore wind structures are supported on large-diameter, rigid monopile foundations. These piles may be subjected to scour due to the waves and currents that causes a loss of soil support and consequently decreases the pile capacity and system stiffness. The results of numerical models suggest that the shape of the scour hole affects the magnitude of pile capacity loss; however, there is a dearth of experimental test data that quantify this effect. This paper presents a series of centrifuge model tests on an instrumented model pile that investigates the effects of scour-hole geometry on the response of a laterally loaded pile embedded in sand. The pile instrumentation allowed load–displacement and p–y (soil reaction – displacement) curves to be derived. Three scour geometries (global, local wide, and local narrow) and three scour depths (1D, 1.5D, and 2D; where D is pile diameter) were modelled. For all three scour types, pile moment capacity decreased almost linearly with increase of scour depth. Simple empirical relations were proposed to evaluate the detrimental influence of scour on the pile moment capacity. A new method has been developed to allow designers to quantify the effect of scour-hole shape and severity of scour on the pile response.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Geo-engineerin
GPU-accelerated depth map generation for X-ray simulations of complex CAD geometries
No full textInteractive x-ray simulations of complex computer-aided design (CAD) models can provide valuable insights for better interpretation of the defect signatures such as porosity from x-ray CT images. Generating the depth map along a particular direction for the given CAD geometry is the most compute-intensive step in x-ray simulations. We have developed a GPU-accelerated method for real-time generation of depth maps of complex CAD geometries. We preprocess complex components designed using commercial CAD systems using a custom CAD module and convert them into a fine user-defined surface tessellation. Our CAD module can be used by different simulators as well as handle complex geometries, including those that arise from complex castings and composite structures. We then make use of a parallel algorithm that runs on a graphics processing unit (GPU) to convert the finely-tessellated CAD model to a voxelized representation. The voxelized representation can enable heterogeneous modeling of the volume enclosed by the CAD model by assigning heterogeneous material properties in specific regions. The depth maps are generated from this voxelized representation with the help of a GPU-accelerated ray-casting algorithm. The GPU-accelerated ray-casting method enables interactive (> 60 frames-per-second) generation of the depth maps of complex CAD geometries. This enables arbitrarily rotation and slicing of the CAD model, leading to better interpretation of the x-ray images by the user. In addition, the depth maps can be used to aid directly in CT reconstruction algorithms.This proceeding may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This proceeding appeared in Grandin, Robert J., Gavin Young, Stephen D. Holland, and Adarsh Krishnamurthy. "GPU-accelerated depth map generation for X-ray simulations of complex CAD geometries." In AIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 1949, no. 1, p. 190002. AIP Publishing LLC, 2018, and may be found at
DOI: 10.1063/1.5031636.
Copyright 2018 Author(s).
Posted with permission
Introduction: Masculinities, discourse and men’s health
No full textIn 1978, the Journal of Social Issues published an article titled, ‘Warning: The Male Sex Role May Be Dangerous to Your Health’. The author, James Harrison, had noted the ‘growing differential in life expectancy between men and women’ (1978, p. 65) in the United States (US) during the twentieth century and wanted to critically review existing research in order to understand what factors might be contributing to this trend. He identified two explanatory perspectives: a ‘biogenetic’ one and a ‘psychosocial’ one. Harrison examined the evidence for both perspectives and concluded that ‘the best available evidence confirms the psychosocial perspective that sex-role socialization accounts for the larger part of men’s shorter life expectancy’ (ibid.). In other words, societal expectations of men were found to be more harmful for their health than any ‘biogenetic’ characteristics that might be attributable to them. Fast-forward to the twenty-first century, and the disparities in life expectancy between men and women have maintained (World Health Organization, 2019)
Social and Virtual Networks: Evaluating Synchronous Online Interviewing Using Instant Messenger
No full textThis paper describes an evaluation of the quality and utility of
synchronous online interviewing for data collection in social network
research. Synchronous online interviews facilitated by Instant Messenger
as the communication medium, were undertaken with ten final year
university students. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis of
respondent and researcher evaluation of the quality and utility of IM
indicated that IM was an integral part of student university life and also
an excellent and innovative communication platform; a potential
advancement for research interviewing. IM was subsequently compared
with face-to-face communication in terms of gains and losses for research
interviewing. The efficacy of the method of online interviewing using IM in
this context is discussed. Key Words: Synchronous Online Interviewing,
Instant Messenger, Social Support Networks, Virtual Networks, and
Content Analysi
Experimental and numerical investigation of wire waveguides for therapeutic ultrasound angioplasty
No full textTherapeutic ultrasound angioplasty is an emerging minimally invasive cardiovascular procedure for disrupting atherosclerotic lesions using small diameter wire waveguides. The lesions are damaged through a combination of direct ablation, pressure waves, cavitation and acoustic streaming caused by distal-tip displacements at ultrasonic frequencies.
Numerical and experimental methods are used to investigate the outputs of the wire waveguides during ultrasonic activation. A commercially available generator and acoustic horn are used in combination with Nickel-Titanium (NiTi) wire waveguides in this study. A laser sensor is used to measure the frequency and amplitude output of the distal tip of the wire waveguide, and this is compared to amplitude estimations obtained using an optical microscope. Power is observed to affect both amplitude and frequency.
Clinical devices will require long, flexible waveguides with diameters small enough to access the coronary arteries. A finite element model is used to design tapered sections in long wire waveguides in order to achieve low profile distal geometry, and improve ultrasonic wave transmission. These tapered sections reduce the wire waveguide diameter in two stages, firstly from 1 to 0.35mm and then from 0.35 to 0.2, while increasing the amplitude of the ultrasonic wave by factors of 2.85 and 1.75, respectively. The numerical model also showed damping could potentially be a significant problem in long untapered wire waveguides (>l.5m).
Experimental ablation trials were conducted using the tapered long wire waveguides, including assessment of the effect of various combinations of bend radii and bend angles. The waveguide was found to perform well, but increased power levels were required to transmit ultrasound through tortuous waveguide configurations
Theology in suspense : how the detective fiction of P.D. James provokes theological thought
No full textElectronic redacted version excludes material for which permission has not been granted by the rights holderThe following dissertation argues that the detective fiction of P.D. James
provokes her readers to think theologically. I present evidence from the body of
James’s work, including her detective fiction that features the Detective Adam
Dalgliesh, as well as her other novels, autobiography, and non-fiction work. I also
present a brief history of detective fiction. This history provides the reader with a
better understanding of how P.D James is influenced by the detective genre as well as
how she stands apart from the genre’s traditions.
This dissertation relies on an interview that I conducted with P.D. James in
November, 2008. During the interview, I asked James how Christianity has
influenced her detective fiction and her responses greatly contribute to this
dissertation. However, James’s novels should be interpreted and explored in the
manner that they are received by the reader. How the reader receives and responds to
the novels, not only how James writes the novels, is what causes her stories to
provoke theological thinking.
By examining Christian symbolism that is present in setting, character, the
Detective Adam Dalgliesh, and plot, this dissertation seeks to assert that James
contributes to a theological conversation through her popular detective fiction
Structural Health Monitoring for Performance Assessment of Bridges under Flooding and Seismic Actions
No full textBridges can be subjected to damaging environmental actions due to flooding and seismic hazards. Flood actions that result in scour are a leading cause of bridge failure, while seismic actions that induce lateral forces may lead to high ductility demand that exceeds pier capacity. When combined, seismic actions and scour can lead to effects that depend on the governing scour condition affecting a bridge. Loss of stiffness under scour can reduce the ductility capacity of a bridge but can also lead to an increase in flexibility that may reduce seismic inertial forces. Conversely, increased flexibility can lead to deck collapse due to support loss, so there exists some uncertainty about the combined effect of both phenomena. A necessary step towards the performance assessment of bridges under flooding and seismic actions is to calibrate numerical models that can reproduce structural responses under different actions. A further step is verifying the achievement of performance goals defined by codes. Structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques allow the computation of performance parameters that are useful for calibrating numerical models and performing direct checks of performance goal compliance. In this paper, various strategies employed to monitor bridge health against scour and seismic actions are discussed, with a particular focus on vibration-based damage identification methods
Going Beyond Google Translate?
No full textCiclo 2012 di seminari interni CRS4, Number 20120229.We motivate and describe the design and implementation of a web-based system for the alignment of parallel texts. It builds on the interactive color-highlight interface now deployed at Google Translate. By a series of simple point and click operations translators can mark up equivalent text-ranges in their own translation and in the original. When successful, the visual cues created by this activity should benefit the understanding of readers of limited degrees of bilingualism -- and may also capture aspects of semantic context not readily available to algorithmic statistical machine translation. We provide a working demonstration that treats poetic texts.Statistical machine translation (SMT) delivers texts unacceptable for literary or academic purposes since generally, it cannot assimilate adequate context: Yet how might one ever articulate such context? Here rather than taking a theoretical perspective we adopt an spatio-visual approach made possible by recent advances in the electronic presentation of multilingual texts:– we allow the translator supply the colour higlights... But how? Semantic units don't respect lexical boundaries and they occur at different scales. Any translator, committed to provide a definitive version of a text, eventually arrives at irreversible order of words – and may actually wish to justify their choices by documenting the correspondence between their version and the original. We focus on verse – an extreme challenge for SMT – with the eventual aim of expressing elusive aspects of semantic communication in order to differentiate those that can be articulated via spatio-visual cues. In verse a deviation from a literal correspondence is essential to reestablish in the translation a "decorum" appropriate to the original so that readers are encouraged to achieve an equivalent respect for its author also from the translated works. We use jQuery to provide an interface that lets the human translator mark up what they consider a correct alignment between words, or groups of words, in the original and their own translation – with a view to articulating context that may not be readily available to SMT. We detail below how the interface runs off a web-page and allows the alignment of equivalent ranges in parallel texts via a simple point-and-click action. Alignments created by the user are instantaneously made visible using a variant of the interactive color-highlight system mentioned above. Key to reducing the complexity of the implementation of the interface is our systematic deployment of open-standard, non-proprietary, web technologies.2011-09-15AlgheroCHItaly2011, 13-16 settembre 2011, Algher
Design, synthesis and evaluation of organocatalysts in 1,4-conjugate additions to nitroolefins and alkylidene malonates
No full textA family of cinchona-based and thiourea pyrrolidine-based organocatalysts were synthesised and fully characterised. Their catalytic activity and selectivity in 1,4-conjugate additions involving the Michael acceptor, nitrostyrene, was evaluated. Thiourea catalysts based upon the cinchona alkaloid framework were found to exhibit excellent activity and enantioselectivity (up to 95% yield and 97% ee) at loadings of 10 mol% when 1,3-diketones were employed as the pronucleophile. This result demonstrated that a thiourea cinchona catalyst was much more efficient at catalysing this Michael addition than previously reported. The same thiourea organocatalysts were employed in the first successful Michael addition of the sterically challenging dipivaloylmethane to β-nitrostyrene. Thiourea catalysts based upon the pyrrolidine motif were also employed in the Michael addition of cyclohexanone to nitrostyrene, furnishing up to 97% yield and 48% ee .
The organocatalysed conjugate addition reactions involving less activated Michael acceptors, such as ,-unsaturated diesters, ketones and acrylate esters was also investigated. Although these acceptors are challenging substrates and are considerably less reactive than nitrostyrene, we herein report the first organocatalytic Michael addition to an ,-unsaturated diester using a H-bonding bifunctional catalyst. These thiourea catalysts were excellent promoters of the Michael addition of acetylacetone to dimethyl ethylidenemalonate and the yields were high (up to 99%) for all of the catalysts tested. Other Michael donors, such as nitromethane and malononitrile, were also successfully employed as nucleophiles in Michael additions to ,-unsaturated diesters, with yields and enantioselectivities of up to 88% and 48% respectively.
Additionally, a family of -substituted aminoacrylates were synthesised. Ethyl-3-(dimethylamino)acrylate proved to be a good Michael acceptor in the 1,4-conjugate addition of phenyllithium (64% yield). Variable temperature NMR spectroscopy was used to analyse the restricted rotation about the C-N bond in these aminoacrylates. The barrier to rotation about the C-N bond was calculated for a series of compounds. The effect of the steric bulk associated with the various N-substitutions had on the barrier to rotation was evaluated using Charton values
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