1,476,635 research outputs found
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
The computer simulation and prediction of rock fall
Get PDFThis thesis deals with the study of rock falls using a mathematical model, codified for computer use, entitled GeoFall. GeoFall, which was developed by the author, allows predictions to be made of rock fall trajectories, run out distances and kinetic energies for a rock of any arbitrary shape. Its main purpose is to assist in the design of remedial works. The mathematical model is based on rigid body mechanics, and analyses a fall in 2D space using a new theory of impact dynamics developed by Brach (1991). The main features and algorithms of the program are presented in this thesis. The performance of GeoFall was evaluated by comparing actual rock fall events described in several published papers with the output created by GeoFall. Also the output from GeoFall has been compared with the output from other rock fall simulation programs used to simulate the documented rockfalls. A new rock slope inventory system entitled the Rock Fall Risk Assessment System (RFRAS) has been developed by the author to determine the rock fall risk at specific rock fall sites. It consists of three phases of inspection, the slope survey, and the preliminary and detailed rating phases. The detailed rating phase uses 13 parameters that when assessed, evaluated and totalled, numerically differentiates slopes from the least to the most hazardous producing an overall rating in the range 21-1926. It not only allows the relative risk of rockfall between slopes to be assessed but it also categorises the rock fall risk and the potential number of future rockfalls. It has been tested on 18 slopes at ten locations in County Durham. The final part of the thesis details a new laboratory based procedure that can be used to determine the coefficients of restitution for any type of rock material. The normal coefficient of restitution has been determined for seven different types of rock, and the tangential coefficient of restitution has been determined for a local sandstone. Some tentative correlations between the normal coefficient of restitution and the rocks physical properties, such as its Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) have been presented
Uniqueness and Nondegeneracy of Positive Solutions of (-Δ)su + u = up in RN when s is Close to 1
Get PDFWe consider the equation (-Δ)su + u, with s ∈ (0, 1) in the subcritical range of p. We prove that if s is sufficiently close to 1 the equation possesses a unique minimizer, which is nondegenerate. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
A principal components approach to parent-to-newborn body composition associations in South India
Get PDFBackground: size at birth is influenced by environmental factors, like maternal nutrition and parity, and by genes. Birth weight is a composite measure, encompassing bone, fat and lean mass. These may have different determinants. The main purpose of this paper was to use anthropometry and principal components analysis (PCA) to describe maternal and newborn body composition, and associations between them, in an Indian population. We also compared maternal and paternal measurements (body mass index (BMI) and height) as predictors of newborn body composition.Methods: weight, height, head and mid-arm circumferences, skinfold thicknesses and external pelvic diameters were measured at 30 ± 2 weeks gestation in 571 pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic of the Holdsworth Memorial Hospital, Mysore, India. Paternal height and weight were also measured. At birth, detailed neonatal anthropometry was performed. Unrotated and varimax rotated PCA was applied to the maternal and neonatal measurements.Results: rotated PCA reduced maternal measurements to 4 independent components (fat, pelvis, height and muscle) and neonatal measurements to 3 components (trunk+head, fat, and leg length). An SD increase in maternal fat was associated with a 0.16 SD increase (?) in neonatal fat (p < 0.001, adjusted for gestation, maternal parity, newborn sex and socio-economic status). Maternal pelvis, height and (for male babies) muscle predicted neonatal trunk+head (? = 0. 09 SD; p = 0.017, ? = 0.12 SD; p = 0.006 and ? = 0.27 SD; p < 0.001). In the mother-baby and father-baby comparison, maternal BMI predicted neonatal fat (? = 0.20 SD; p < 0.001) and neonatal trunk+head (? = 0.15 SD; p = 0.001). Both maternal (? = 0.12 SD; p = 0.002) and paternal height (? = 0.09 SD; p = 0.030) predicted neonatal trunk+head but the associations became weak and statistically non-significant in multivariate analysis. Only paternal height predicted neonatal leg length (? = 0.15 SD; p = 0.003).Conclusion: principal components analysis is a useful method to describe neonatal body composition and its determinants. Newborn adiposity is related to maternal nutritional status and parity, while newborn length is genetically determined. Further research is needed to understand mechanisms linking maternal pelvic size to fetal growth and the determinants and implications of the components (trunk v leg length) of fetal skeletal growt
A retrospective evaluation of the quality of malaria case management at twelve health facilities in four districts in Zambia
No full textOBJECTIVES: To establish the appropriateness of malaria case management at health facility level in four districts in Zambia.
METHODS:
This study was a retrospective evaluation of the quality of malaria case management at health facilities in four districts conveniently sampled to represent both urban and rural settings in different epidemiological zones and health facility coverage. The review period was from January to December 2008. The sample included twelve lower level health facilities from four districts. The Pearson Chi-square test was used to identify characteristics which affected the quality of case management.
RESULTS:
Out of 4 891 suspected malaria cases recorded at the 12 health facilities, more than 80% of the patients had a temperature taken to establish their fever status. About 67% (CI 95 66.1-68.7) were tested for parasitemia by either rapid diagnostic test or microscopy, whereas the remaining 22.5% (CI 95 21.3.1-23.7) were not subjected to any malaria test. Of the 2 247 malaria cases reported (complicated and uncomplicated), 71% were parasitologically confirmed while 29% were clinically diagnosed (unconfirmed). About 56% (CI 95 53.9-58.1) of the malaria cases reported were treated with artemether-lumefantrine (AL), 35% (CI 95 33.1-37.0) with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine, 8% (CI 95 6.9-9.2) with quinine and 1% did not receive any anti-malarial. Approximately 30% of patients WHO were found negative for malaria parasites were still prescribed an anti-malarial, contrary to the guidelines. There were marked inter-district variations in the proportion of patients in WHOm a diagnostic tool was used, and in the choice of anti-malarials for the treatment of malaria confirmed cases. Association between health worker characteristics and quality of case malaria management showed that nurses performed better than environmental health technicians and clinical officers on the decision whether to use the rapid diagnostic test or not. Gender, in service training on malaria, years of residence in the district and length of service of the health worker at the facility were not associated with diagnostic and treatment choices.
CONCLUSIONS:
Malaria case management was characterised by poor adherence to treatment guidelines. The non-adherence was mainly in terms of: inconsistent use of confirmatory tests (rapid diagnostic test or microscopy) for malaria; prescribing anti-malarials which are not recommended (e.g. sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine) and prescribing anti-malarials to cases testing negative. Innovative approaches are required to improve health worker adherence to diagnosis and treatment guidelines
The rise and fall of the Labour league of youth
No full textThis thesis charts the rise and fall of the Labour Party’s first and most enduring youth organisation, the Labour League of Youth. The history of the League, from its birth in the early nineteen twenties to its demise in the late nineteen fifties, is placed in the context of the Labour Party’s subsequent fruitless attempts to establish and maintain a vibrant and functional youth organisation. A narrative is incorporated that illuminates the culture, organisation and political activism of the League and establishes it as a predominantly working class radical organisation. The reluctance on the part of the Labour Party to grant autonomy to its youth sections resulted in the history of the League of Youth being one of control, suppression and tension. This state of affairs ensured that subsequent youth groups, the Young Socialists and Young Labour, would be established in an atmosphere of reservation and scepticism.
The thesis places the prime responsibility for the failure of the party’s youth organisations with the party leadership but also considers the contributory factors of changing social and political circumstances. A number of themes are explored which include the impact of structure and agency factors, the power of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the political socialisation of leading figures within the party, the social context in which each of the groups emerged and the extent to which the youth groups were prey to intra-party factionalism.
The thesis redresses the balance of research where most accounts have focussed on the Young Socialists and traces the common characteristics that are prevalent in the way the party leadership has approached its relationship with its youth organisations. Use has been made of previously unpublished primary source material, the major source being the League of Youth members themselves whose recollections have helped to demonstrate the arguments put forward in this thesis
A Study of Fall Detection: Review and Implementation
Get PDFThis thesis presents a research study on Fall detection with a comprehensive survey on available related literature and an evaluation experiment. Fall detection is a major challenge in the public health care domain, especially for the elderly, and reliable surveillance is a necessity to mitigate the effects of falls. The technology and products related to fall detection have always been in high demand within the security and the health-care industries. An
effective fall detection system is required to provide rgent support and to significantly reduce the medical care costs associated with falls. In this thesis, we initially give a comprehensive survey of different systems for fall detection and their underlying algorithms.
Fall detection approaches are divided into three main categories: wearable device based, ambience device based and vision based. These approaches are summarised and compared with each other and a conclusion is derived with some discussions on possible future work.
Then we present an evaluation of fall detection using optical flow. Optical flow is one of the widely used approaches in computer vision to estimate motion. The literature of optical flow is briefly reviewed and some of the methods are implemented with discussion on
experimental results. The best output yielding algorithm with respect to accuracy is used to setup an evaluation of fall detection. The evaluation compares our experimental results with the results obtained using other techniques. At the end we draw a conclusion in general on our research study and in particular on our contributions: Fall detection survey and Fall detection Evaluation. We also point out the futuristic direction of our research study with suggestions on possible areas with further development
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Water in the Poudre: where does is come from, who has rights to use it, and who's watching?
Get PDFPresented at the Fall 2014 Center for Collaborative Conservation (https://collaborativeconservation.org/) Seminar and Discussion Series, "Perspectives on the Poudre: Working River/Healthy River", October 7, 2014, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. This fall semester's bi-weekly Seminar and Discussion Series focuses on the Poudre River and its watershed, its ecological needs, and how it is used to supply water for agriculture and urban needs. Presenters will highlight their topics and engage participants in dialogue. The series will culminate in a "world café" - campus and community open dialogue about the Poudre.Mark Simpson: Mark has been employed with the Division of Water Resources since 1999, working with various Water Commissioners in the South Platte Basin. He spent 11 years as the Deputy Water Commissioner for the Poudre River, and in 2012 became the lead Poudre River Water Commissioner. This position has the duties of distributing the water of the Poudre River on a daily basis pursuant to court water decrees, and compiling records of water diversion and use. Mark studied Rangeland Ecology and Watershed Science at Colorado State University, receiving a BS in Range Management in 1998.Dan Brown: Mr. Brown has practiced with Fischer, Brown, Bartlett & Gunn since 1999. Mr. Brown works extensively on water quantity, water quality and real property matters. He has successfully represented clients in all of these areas, but the focus of his practice is representing a varied clientele before the Division No. 1 Water Court (South Platte Basin), where he is currently involved (both on behalf of applicants and opposers) in more than 50 cases in Water Court. Mr. Brown has lectured on numerous occasions on water law and legal ethics topics. Mr. Brown received his Juris Doctorate, with an emphasis in Environmental Law, from the University of Oregon, School of Law in 1997. He also received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990, and his Masters of Science in Applied Economics, with an emphasis in Natural Resources, from Montana State University in 1994.PowerPoint presentations.Mark Simpson and Dan Brown present separate PowerPoints presentations and discuss the development of the major water right in the area, including the water "exchanges" that are vital to water users on the stream, from the very first water adjudication until the present and discuss how water development and administration impacts the Poudre River
Evidence for the intra-uterine programming of adiposity in later life
No full textAim: Research in animals has shown that altering foetal nutrition by under-nourishing or over-nourishing the mother or rendering her diabetic or foetal exposure to glucocorticoids and toxins can programme obesity in later life. The increased adiposity is mediated by permanent changes in appetite, food choices, physical activity and energy metabolism. In humans, increased adiposity has been shown in people who experienced foetal under-nutrition due to maternal famine or over-nutrition due to maternal diabetes. Lower birth weight (a proxy for foetal under-nutrition) is associated with a reduced adult lean mass and increased intra-abdominal fat. Higher birth-weight caused by maternal diabetes is associated with increased total fat mass and obesity in later life. There is growing evidence that maternal obesity, without diabetes, is also a risk factor for obesity in the child, due to foetal over-nutrition effects. Maternal smoking is associated with an increased risk of obesity in the children, although a causal link has not been proven. Other foetal exposures associated with increased adiposity in animals include glucocorticoids and endocrine disruptors.Conclusions: Reversing the current obesity epidemic will require greater attention to, and better understanding of, these inter-generational (mother-offspring) factors that programme body composition during early development.<br/
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