435 research outputs found
Acupuncture placebos
No full textIn this brief but engaging article, the author ruminates on the political nature of research and on the problems this poses for East Asian Medicine, and points to the fact that the thorny business of defining best (or at least 'good enough') practice is of central importance here. He concludes by offering a richly simple model - based on the Five Phases (wu xing) - for defining what best practice i
Sacra Moneta : Mints and divinity: purity, miracles and powers
No full textMints were a vital and almost sacred body in the State administration: the place of transformation of metal into coins. The paper explores the link between justice, coins and divine power including reflections on St Augustine’s metaphor of man as ‘nummus Dei’ and thus product of a God-moneyer. The status of the mint within the State is illustrated by various medieval examples (emperors, kings, and the republics of Florence and Venice). Finally, the author describes sacred events and miracles within mints as reported by vaious accounts. The English kings in the 14th century consecrated gold florins of Florence on the altar of the Good Friday Mass before using that gold to produce the miraculous ‘cramp rings’. The Duke of Milan Francis II Sforza had new gold coins struck and some of these were stained with the blood of St John the Baptist (two of these are still kept in the Milan Duoomo today). Good and bad government practices leave good or bad signs on the coins: the stories told here show how coins, especially when they were of pure gold or silver, were not trivial objects but they had a complex personality and biography
Computer Aided Design for Construction in the Building Industry
No full textCivil Engineering and Geoscience
Does collaboration enhance learning?The challenge of learning from collaborative water management research
No full textDoes collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders enhance mutual cognitive learning? To answer this question, this thesis analyzes two research processes concerning future flood management in the Lower Rhine basin and groundwater management in and around Delft. The results suggest that only intensive collaboration enhances learning significantly. Moreover, many other factors that influenced learning were identified.Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience
A dual interface method in cylindrical coordinates for two-phase pipe flows
No full textThis research entails the numerical simulation of physical flow instabilities that can occur in two-phase pipe flows with a new efficient algorithm. The fluids are assumed to be immiscible, and the flow is incompressible and isothermal in a straight circular pipe section with a certain inclination. The numerical algorithm that was developed consists of a flow solver and a sharp interface model that solve the Navier-Stokes equations in cylindrical coordinates. The simulation results obtained with the new method are validated through comparison with other models and with experiments. The focus lies on obtaining an accurate and efficient algorithm that can ultimately be used for Direct Numerical Simulations or Large Eddy Simulations of turbulent two-phase pipe flows
Memory beyond Words : Narratives of the Shoah in Swedish Author Zenia Larsson’s Works
No full textZenia Larsson (1922-2007) was born into a Jewish family in Łódź and settled down in Sweden in 1945 after surviving deportation to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She chose Swedish as her language when, in the late 1950s, she started writing, motivated by the need to give testimony to her experience. Yet, she soon realised that she could not face her own past directly, and thus chose the novel form, which resulted in a trilogy, autobiographically inspired: Skuggorma vid träbron (The Shadows by the Wooden Bridge, 1960), Lång är gryningen (Long is the Dawn, 1961), Livet till mötes (Meeting Life, 1962). In these works, she still avoids narrating the months in the concentration camps, closing her first volume with the deportation from the Łódź ghetto and starting the second one with the liberation. Anders Ohlsson describes this technique as an example of “rhetoric of silence”, a not uncommon aspect of Shoah literature. This sharp contrast between the duty to narrate as a witness and the difficulty to recall what is unspeakable is a recurrent theme in Larsson’s narrative production. The paper whose abstract is here published aimed to study how this theme is treated and developed in some of her most relevant works. Moving from Ohlsson’s contribution and the results of studies on Shoah literature, the analysis focused on both fictional and explicitly autobiographical works, inlcuding Morfars kopparslantar (Grandfather’s copper pennies, 1970; travelogue of her journey to Israel); Brev från en ny verklighet (Letters from a New Reality, 1972; collection of letters to a friend); Mellan gårdagen och nuet (Between Yesterday and Now, 1985; collection of articles previously published in newspapers and magazines)
CONTINGENT BELIEFS AS PREDICTORS OF WITHIN-PERSON VARIATION IN CONSCIENTIOUSNESS AT WORK.
No full textThe article focuses on contingent beliefs that can predict the within-person variations of personality which affect conscientiousness in the workplace. Evaluation is based three psychological aspects of job performance which are task importance, task difficulty, and task urgency. The research methods used in this study include the experience sampling questionnaire and an analysis of the latent-state conscientiousness construct by hierarchical linear modeling. The author suggests that work behavior is related to personality function
Feasibility Study for the Implementation of a G. T. System in a Multi-Product Company
No full textSince the late nineteen-forties, the concept of Group Technology (G.T) has been applied in European engineering companies, first in Russia and since the middle sixties in West Europe including Great Britain. The early applications were in plants particularly suited to this technology, but more recently general batch producing companies have looked at this manufacturing philosophy; these, according to the theory, could benefit greatly from G.T. Since approximately 80% of the engineering industry in this country is involved in batch production, it is likely that a wide-spread application of G.T. would have far reaching effects on the productivity of the engineering industry in this country. The author has been employed by Wildt Mellor Bromley Limited, Leicester to study the feasibility of applying GT. to the manufacture of large circular knitting machines which are complex assemblies produced in a variety of different sizes and models. The report presented here covers the following stages of a fundamental G.T. analysis (i) review of the plant and its problems to test its G.T. suitability (ii) assessment of objectives and prediction of financial benefits (iii) the analysis of the total component spectrum (a) to design the overall cell layout of the plant (b) to design a prototype cell. The report is based on a survey of the existing literature and it has been attempted to lay down certain parameters to gauge the suitability of a plant for G.T. and the savings which can be obtained. The available analysis techniques have been surveyed arid by means of the test case illustrated, it has been demonstrated how techniques of analysis can be selected to suit the specific requirements of the plant in question. The importance of supporting administrative systems, which have had limited publicity in most other applications, has been stressed
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