33 research outputs found

    Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change and the Good of the Community

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    Held annually, the McCall, Idaho, Winter Carnival has become a modern tradition. A festival and celebration, it is also a source of community income and opportunity for shared community effort; a chance to display the town attractively to outsiders and to define and assert McCall\u27s identity; and consequently, a source of disagreement among citizens over what their community is, how it should be presented, and what the carnival means. Though rooted in the broad traditions of community festival, annual civic events, often sponsored by chambers of commerce, such as that in McCall, are as much expressions of popular culture and local commerce as of older traditions. Yet they become dynamic, newer community traditions, with artistic, informal, and social meanings and practices that make them forms of folklore as well as commoditized culture. Winter Carnival is the first volume in a new Utah State University Press series titled Ritual, Festival, and Celebration and edited by folklorist Jack Santino.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usufaculty_monographs/1056/thumbnail.jp

    Anisotropic hierarchic finite elements for the simulation of piezoelectric smart structures

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    Abstract Purpose -Piezoelectric actuators and sensors are an invaluable part of lightweight designs for several reasons. They can either be used in noise cancellation devices as thin-walled structures are prone to acoustic emissions, or in shape control approaches to suppress unwanted vibrations. Also in Lamb wave based health monitoring systems piezoelectric patches are applied to excite and to receive ultrasonic waves. The purpose of this paper is to develop a higher order finite element with piezoelectric capabilities in order to simulate smart structures efficiently. Design/methodology/approach -In the paper the development of a new fully three-dimensional piezoelectric hexahedral finite element based on the p-version of the finite element method (FEM) is presented. Hierarchic Legendre polynomials in combination with an anisotropic ansatz space are utilized to derive an electro-mechanically coupled element. This results in a reduced numerical effort. The suitability of the proposed element is demonstrated using various static and dynamic test examples. Findings -In the current contribution it is shown that higher order coupled-field finite elements hold several advantages for smart structure applications. All numerical examples have been found to agree well with previously published results. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that accurate results can be obtained with far fewer degrees of freedom compared to conventional low order finite element approaches. Thus, the proposed finite element can lead to a significant reduction in the overall numerical costs. Originality/value -To the best of the author's knowledge, no piezoelectric finite element based on the hierarchical-finite-element-method has yet been published in the literature. Thus, the proposed finite element is a step towards a holistic numerical treatment of structural health monitoring (SHM) related problems using p-version finite elements

    Worth the Weight: The Sustainability of Breaking Culture in Phoenix, Arizona

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    abstract: This document outlines the formation and development of Worth the Weight, or WTW, a platform that seeks to sustain the Breaking community in Phoenix, Arizona and connect the generations by bringing them together in a newly and never before seen event in Breaking, an all weight class and division competition. In the last five to ten years there has been a noticeable decline in the local Breaking community, in part due to the introduction of new dance categories, economic and social changes, the cross over of academia and traditional studios in Phoenix; all combining to create a lack of longevity in veterans of the culture to pass on the tools of the trade to the next generation. WTW is an event that occurs monthly for three consecutive months followed by a month off, totaling nine events and three seasons per calendar year. At each event dancers go head to head in battle in a single elimination style bracket, where they will add a loss or win to their overall season record. The goals of WTW are self-empowerment as well as ownership and investment in the community by those involved through participation in both the event and the planning process; all built on a foundation of trust within the Breaking community. This researcher has thirty years of direct involvement in the Breaking culture with twenty-two of those years as a practitioner in Phoenix, Arizona and co-founder of Furious Styles Crew, Arizona’s longest running Breaking crew. The development of WTW was drawn from this experience along with interviews and observations of Breaking communities worldwide. WTW intends to provide a reliable and consistent outlet during a time of instant gratification, allowing a space for self-discovery and the development of tools to be applied beyond movement. It is hoped that the format of WTW will be a model that can be adapted by other Breaking communities worldwide.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Dance 201

    Are Two Interviews Better Than One? Memory across Repeated Cognitive Interviews.

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    Eyewitnesses to a filmed event were interviewed twice using a Cognitive Interview to examine the effects of variations in delay between the repeated interviews (immediately & 2 days; immediately & 7 days; 7 & 9 days) and the identity of the interviewers (same or different across the two repeated interviews). Hypermnesia (an increase in total amount of information recalled in the repeated interview) occurred without any decrease in the overall accuracy. Reminiscence (the recall of new information in the repeated interview) was also found in all conditions but was least apparent in the longest delay condition, and came with little cost to the overall accuracy of information gathered. The number of errors, increased across the interviews, but the relative accuracy of participants' responses was unaffected. However, when accuracy was calculated based on all unique details provided across both interviews and compared to the accuracy of recall in just the first interview it was found to be slightly lower. The identity of the interviewer (whether the same or different across interviews) had no effects on the number of correct details. There was an increase in recall of new details with little cost to the overall accuracy of information gathered. Importantly, these results suggest that witnesses are unlikely to report everything they remember during a single Cognitive Interview, however exhaustive, and a second opportunity to recall information about the events in question may provide investigators with additional information

    Global agricultural market trends revisited: The roles of energy prices and biofuel production

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    Global agricultural market, trends energy prices, biofuel production, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries,

    Perceived ability and actual recognition accuracy for unfamiliar and famous faces

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    In forensic person recognition tasks, mistakes in the identification of unfamiliar faces occur frequently. This study explored whether these errors might arise because observers are poor at judging their ability to recognize unfamiliar faces, and also whether they might conflate the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Across two experiments, we found that observers could predict their ability to recognize famous but not unfamiliar faces. Moreover, observers seemed to partially conflate these abilities by adjusting ability judgements for famous faces after a test of unfamiliar face recognition (Experiment 1) and vice versa (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that observers have limited insight into their ability to identify unfamiliar faces. These experiments also show that judgements of recognition abilities are malleable and can generalize across different face categories
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