203 research outputs found
Designing the Human-Powered Helicopter: A New Perspective
No full textThe concept of human-powered vertical flight was studied in great depth. Through the manipulation of preexisting theory and analytical methods, a collection of design tools was created to expediently conceptualize and then analyze virtually any rotor. The tools were then arranged as part of a complete helicopter rotor design process. The lessons learned as a result of studying this process—and the tools of which it consists—are presented in the following discussion. It is the belief of the author that by utilizing these tools, as well as the suggestions that accompany them, future engineers may someday build a human-powered helicopter capable of winning the Sikorsky Prize
The ‘insider/outsider’ dilemma of ethnography: Working with young children and their families in cross-cultural contexts
No full textIn this article we unravel the difficulty of being researchers in the homes and classrooms of children and
their families whose origins are, for one of us, very different and, for the other, very similar to our own.
We first situate our work within theories of early socialization and literacy teaching which underpin our
understanding of how young children in cross-cultural contexts learn. We then turn to the question of
working with the families and teachers of these children which poses dilemmas not explained by the theories
presented. We illustrate these through a series of vignettes typifying both the ‘Outsider’ and the ‘Insider’ role.
The stories highlight paradigmatic moments of complexity, clashes or collusion which we unpick in terms of
their generalizability for others working in the field. Finally, we extend theories of dialogue in our search for
a methodology for collaborative work in future cross-cultural ethnographic studies
TSP tour domination and Hamilton cycle decompositions of regular digraphs
No full textF. Glover and A.P. Punnen (1997) asked whether there exists a polynomial time algorithm that, for every TSP instance on n cities, produces a tour which is not worse than at least (n \Gamma 1)!=p tours for some p being a constant or even polynomial in n. We show that, if there exists a constant r ? 1 such that for every sufficiently large k a k-regular digraph of order at most drke can be decomposed into Hamilton cycles and such a decomposition can be found in time polynomial in n, then there exists a required TSP algorithm where p is a constant. This result is of interest as R. Haggkvist announced (not published yet) that the above Hamilton decomposition Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] exists for every 1 ! r 2 and can be found in polynomial time. His very deep result and our main theorem imply that, in polynomial time, one can always find a tour, which is not worse than 50% of all tours. Keywords: TSP, domination analysis, Hamilton cycle decomposition, regula..
Health Hazard Evaluation Report: HETA 89-0026-2495: Hamilton Fire Department, Hamilton, Ohio
No full textIn response to a request from the Deputy Chief for Operations and Administration, an investigation was begun into possible hazardous noise exposures conditions faced by members of the Hamilton Fire Department (SIC-9224), Hamilton, Ohio during their work activities. Six fire stations were maintained throughout the city, manned by approximately 100 fire fighters. Noise surveys were conducted which indicated that the 24-hour cumulative noise doses were generally less than the amount allowed under any of the environmental evaluation criteria used by NIOSH. However, portions of the analyses indicated that there were noise levels that greatly exceeded the exposure limits for brief periods of time. These were usually associated with emergency response runs of the fire vehicles. Analysis of the audiometric data collected for 90 of the firemen indicated a decline in hearing ability in the high frequency sound region, characteristic of noise induced hearing loss. The author concludes that a health hazard existed for fire fighters. The author recommends that measures be taken to reduce the noise exposure to the fire fighters and help prevent any further loss of hearing
Schooling for 'lesser beings'
No full textUsing Edward Said’s notion of ‘lesser beings’, it is argued that the political culture of schooling for Maori was and still is part of a pervasive Western European intellectual climate and culture which has a quite recent history, and which provided powerful support for the notion of Europe possessing a categorical superiority over all other continents, which in turn justified imperialism or neo-colonialism as civilising missions.
Racism and violence were endemic in colonialism and, despite the claimed moral high ground, were endemic in Aotearoa/New Zealand. War was eulogised in the Native School system more than once. The rise and demise of the World War II Maori War Organisation is illustrative of the rejection of Maori aspirations. There were still no Maori in the senior echelons of the Maori Department in 1972.
The Native, later Maori, School system was overtly designed to 'Europeanise' Maori children and therefore Maori society. Individualism was deeply embedded in English and set-tler thinking, whilst communal, ‘communist’ Maori society was to be destroyed.
The thesis examines images of colonialism, empire and imperialism in fiction and non-fiction, New Zealand and British, for adults and children, and notes the attitudes of think-ers like J S Mill and Darwin, of children’s authors Jules Verne and G H Henty, and of New Zealand author William Satchell. The images continue, pervasive and endemic, in recent adult novels. Science also played a role, as did history.
Ranginui Walker, who is Maori, is the only historian to have written a history of New Zea-land which addressed the issue of waste lands, an issue on which Pakeha historians have a blind spot. New Zealand encyclopedia do not index ‘waste land’ or ‘confiscation’. Only two Waikato histories deal adequately, or even accurately, with confiscation, the central episode in the history of the Waikato. Tourist material is equally illustrative.
The Native Schools section of the Education Department ran the Native Schools like a fiefdom, operating in legislative and regulatory black holes for the first thirty years and for much of the time after that. Teachers were moved around at will.
The practice of James H Pope, the first inspector of Native Schools, is closely and critically examined, and negatively assessed. His official writings were consistently derogatory of Maori, and his decisions in respect of Te Kopua Native School were at times detrimental to the pupils. Pope was a product of his times.
The Te Kopua record is closely scrutinised, and the practice of the Education Department is frequently found wanting. It is probable that the establishment of the school was aimed to destabilise King Country Maori, not to benefit the children. It is a story of Maori co-operation and contribution.
Part Two is a detailed partial biography of Te Kopua, it being argued that until there is a significant corpus of studies of Native Schools a valid history of the Native/Maori School system and of schooling for Maori is not possibl
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Some rhetorical strategies in later nineteenth-century laboring-class poetry
No full textGovernance and economic growth
No full textBecause protection of property rights cannot be appropriated by any individual, it is widely recognized as being the state's responsibility. Moreover, recent empirical evidence suggests that protection of property rights leads to higher investment levels and faster growth. The extent of property rights protection differs significantly across countries. The author integrates the emergence of property rights within a simple growth framework. Drawing on North (1990), he presents a model where economic performance and enforcement of property rights may reinforce each other.Initial conditions determine the economy's convergence to a high-income or a low-income steady state. Existing empirical evidence offers tentative support for this theory.Judicial System Reform,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Common Property Resource Development,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Common Property Resource Development,Environmental Economics&Policies,Governance Indicators
Policing serious public disorder: the search for principles, policies and operational lessons. [In two volumes]
No full textThe paper examines the influence of central government on the police response to serious public disorder; the effectiveness or otherwise of the law and the way in which it is used by the police in their response to such disorder, and searches for sone principles which need to be followed if the police are to maintain the general support of the communities in which they are required to act. Some comparisons are made, and differences highlighted, between the police commander in his response to serious public disorder, once it has broken out, and the military commander in battle. But, guided by lessons from history, the paper principally concentrates on the environment in which the operational police commander is required to act in responding to actual or potential serious public disorder, pointing out that he is dependant for his success on firstly, an effective system of command and control; secondly, on an intelligence system which feeds relevant and accurate information on which he can make sound and informed decisions; and thirdly, the physical resources, e.g. personnel and equipment, and the approved tactics which enable him to restore public tranquility once disorder has broken out. But before he can use the physical resources effectively, he must have a sound strategy for dealing with actual or potential disorder
Modelling the hidden magnetic field of low-mass stars
No full textPL acknowledges support from a Science and Technology Facilities Council studentship. JM, AAV and RF acknowledge support from fellowships of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, the Royal Astronomical Society and Science and Technology Facilities Council, respectively.Zeeman-Doppler imaging is a spectropolarimetric technique that is used to map the large-scale surface magnetic fields of stars. These maps in turn are used to study the structure of the stars' coronae and winds. This method, however, misses any small-scale magnetic flux whose polarization signatures cancel out. Measurements of Zeeman broadening show that a large percentage of the surface magnetic flux may be neglected in this way. In this paper we assess the impact of this 'missing flux' on the predicted coronal structure and the possible rates of spin-down due to the stellar wind. To do this we create a model for the small-scale field and add this to the Zeeman-Doppler maps of the magnetic fields of a sample of 12 M dwarfs. We extrapolate this combined field and determine the structure of a hydrostatic, isothermal corona. The addition of small-scale surface field produces a carpet of low-lying magnetic loops that covers most of the surface, including the stellar equivalent of solar 'coronal holes' where the large-scale field is opened up by the stellar wind and hence would be X-ray dark. We show that the trend of the X-ray emission measure with rotation rate (the so-called 'activity-rotation relation') is unaffected by the addition of small-scale field, when scaled with respect to the large-scale field of each star. The addition of small-scale field increases the surface flux; however, the large-scale open flux that governs the loss of mass and angular momentum in the wind remains unaffected. We conclude that spin-down times and mass-loss rates calculated from surface magnetograms are unlikely to be significantly influenced by the neglect of small-scale field.Peer reviewe
The Persistence of Minimalism
No full textThe following work develops a new and general theory of minimalism – one addressing both its transhistorical and interdisciplinary dimensions, and capable of accounting for existing minimalism of every epoch and in every medium, while suitably open to embrace minimalist work yet to be created. To offer such a theory it is necessary not only to revisit the histories of minimalist practice and criticism, but also to consider its radical philosophical ground and implications. Hence its principal thesis – that minimalism exemplifies the persistence and facticity of the Real – grapples at once with the ontological heart of minimalist theory, and its practical instantiation through canonical as well as rarely considered examples. Divided into three parts, the first part addresses minimalism as the manifestation of particular aesthetic properties in relation to critical and theoretical trends. Since it becomes apparent that no single descriptive or theoretical account adequately frames minimalism, the discussion turns to the possibility of discovering a philosophical ground equally radical to the minimalist objects it addresses. The Real – an indifferent field of forces from which contingent entities are subtracted from within an irreversible temporal passage – offers precisely this radical continuum. Minimalism, by exposing the continuity between radical poiesis and an essentially quantitative understanding of Being, clarifies the indifferent persistence of the Real in every existential situation. Penetrating to the heart of this proposition, parts two and three respectively address minimalism in terms of its quantitative logic of Being – every exemplary subtraction from which is instantiated a type of existential calculation – and its exemplary aesthetic manifestation in terms of an existential transumption – a constructive poietic displacement by which minimalism renders itself maximally intelligible in terms of its objecthood and persistence. The work concludes with a typology which reorients and confirms the substance of the preceding argumentation
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