344 research outputs found
Reliance Building
No full textView looking up the east elevation, showing bay windows; "The four initial floors of the fourteen-storey Reliance Building, designed by Charles B. Atwood of Daniel Burnham's office and the structural engineer E.C. Shankland, were erected in 1890. This being the first comprehensive achievement of the system now known as Chicago construction, was repeated innumerable times in Chicago in the building boom that lasted from 1890 to 1893. It consisted of a riveted steel-frame superstructure, hollow-tile flooring on steel joists, plaster fire-proofing, perimeter bay windows filled with plate glass, steel-trussed wind bracing and bedrock concrete caissons sometimes extending for as much as 125 feet beneath the footing." p. 63 Source: Frampton, Kenneth; Modern architecture, 1851-1945, New York: Rizzoli, 1983 (0847805069) (accessed 12/6/2007
Evaluation of a Bayesian MCMC Random Effects Inference Methodology for Capture-Mark-Recapture Data
No full textMonte Carlo simulation was used to evaluate properties of a simple Bayesian MCMC analysis of the random effects model for single group Cormack-Jolly-Seber capture-recapture data. The MCMC method is applied to the model via a logit link, so parameters p, S are on a logit scale, where logit(S) is assumed to have, and is generated from, a normal distribution with mean μ and variance σ2 . Marginal prior distributions on logit(p) and μ were independent normal with mean zero and standard deviation 1.75 for logit(p) and 100 for μ ; hence minimally informative. Marginal prior distribution on σ2 was placed on τ2=1/σ2 as a gamma distribution with α=β=0.001 . The study design has 432 points spread over 5 factors: occasions (t) , new releases per occasion (u), p, μ , and σ . At each design point 100 independent trials were completed (hence 43,200 trials in total), each with sample size n=10,000 from the parameter posterior distribution. At 128 of these design points comparisons are made to previously reported results from a method of moments procedure. We looked at properties of point and interval inference on μ , and σ based on the posterior mean, median, and mode and equal-tailed 95% credibility interval. Bayesian inference did very well for the parameter μ , but under the conditions used here, MCMC inference performance for σ was mixed: poor for sparse data (i.e., only 7 occasions) or σ=0 , but good when there were sufficient data and not small σ
Chinese and English Infants’ Tone Perception: Evidence for Perceptual Reorganization.
No full textOver half the world’s population speaks a tone language, yet infant speech perception research has typically focused on consonants and vowels. Very young infants can discriminate a wide range of native and nonnative consonants and vowels, and then in a process of perceptual reorganization over the 1st year, discrimination of most nonnative speech sounds deteriorates. We investigated perceptual reorganization for tones by testing 6- and 9-month-old infants from tone (Chinese) and nontone (English) language environments for speech (lexical tone) and nonspeech (violin sound) tone discrimination in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Overall, Chinese infants performed equally well at 6 and 9 months for both speech and nonspeech tone discrimination. Conversely, English infants’ discrimination of lexical tone declined between 6 and 9 months of age, whereas their nonspeech tone discrimination remained constant. These results indicate that the reorganization of tone perception is a function of the native language environment, and that this reorganization is linguistically based
Telecommunications policy in Turkey: restructuring for economic growth. European Policy Paper #11, November 2006
No full textIntroduction. Modern telecommunications technology is now widely seen as a critical driver in economic development. However, the issues involved in the rapid deployment of this technology are complex and frequently highly controversial. While some of these issues are technical, the most difficult ones involve changing a legal and regulatory framework which was originally designed for different times and different technologies. The process of changing this framework necessarily involves disruptive change for existing service providers as well as substantial benefits for the economy at large. This paper seeks to discuss these issues in light of Turkey’s progress to date in taking advantage of advanced available telecommunications technology and the myriad productivity-enhancing services that are associated with it.(1) An important element in developing a more competitive and dynamic sector in Turkey has been the desire of the country to become a member of the European Union. This has encouraged changes in the telecommunications regulatory regime following the guidelines set out in Chapter 19 of the EU “acquis” for candidate members. Nonetheless, substantial further efforts are needed to complete and implement the desired regulatory framework, particularly as it affects the former government monopoly carrier, Turk Telekom, and the cable companies. A further limiting factor has been an overall investment climate in Turkey which has been characterized by a high level of uncertainty for most investors, regardless of size or nationality. Policy recommendations to help accelerate the deployment of telecommunications technology include a clear reaffirmation of the government’s priorities for the sector, a reduction in the level of ownership and regulatory uncertainty, strengthening the Board and Staff of the Telecommunications Authority, and reviewing policies which reduce the scope and increase the cost of telecommunication licenses
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Estimation of population size in multiple capture-recapture studies when capture probabilities vary among animals
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Cowpox virus infection in natural field vole Microtus agrestispopulations: significant negative impacts on survival
No full text1. Cowpox virus is an endemic virus circulating in populations of wild rodents. It has been implicated as a potential cause of population cycles in field voles Microtus agrestis L., in Britain, owing to a delayed density-dependent pattern in prevalence, but its impact on field vole demographic parameters is unknown. This study tests the hypothesis that wild field voles infected with cowpox virus have a lower probability of survival than uninfected individuals. 2. The effect of cowpox virus infection on the probability of an individual surviving to the next month was investigated using longitudinal data collected over 2 years from four grassland sites in Kielder Forest, UK. This effect was also investigated at the population level, by examining whether infection prevalence explained temporal variation in survival rates, once other factors influencing survival had been controlled for. 3. Individuals with a probability of infection, P(I), of 1 at a time when base survival rate was at median levels had a 22.4% lower estimated probability of survival than uninfected individuals, whereas those with a P(I) of 0.5 had a 10.4% lower survival. 4. At the population level, survival rates also decreased with increasing cowpox prevalence, with lower survival rates in months of higher cowpox prevalence. 5. Simple matrix projection models with 28 day time steps and two stages, with 71% of voles experiencing cowpox infection in their second month of life (the average observed seroprevalence at the end of the breeding season) predict a reduction in 28-day population growth rate during the breeding season from λ = 1.62 to 1.53 for populations with no cowpox infection compared with infected populations. 6. This negative correlation between cowpox virus infection and field vole survival, with its potentially significant effect on population growth rate, is the first for an endemic pathogen in a cyclic population of wild rodents
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