249 research outputs found
Why Look at Animals in Landscapes?
No full textThis book was published on the occasion of the two-person exhibition Reflexive Animals with work by Heather Passmore and Carrie Walker. The exhibition was held at SFU Gallery from September 8 to October 20, 2012. It includes written contributions by artist Julie Andreyev, poet Peter Culley and Bill Jeffries.final article publishe
Women, gender and fascism in Europe, 1919-1945
No full textWhat attracts women to far-right movements that appear to denigrate their rights? This question has vexed feminist scholars for decades and has led to many lively debates in the academy. In this context, during the 1980s, the study of women, gender, and fascism in twentieth-century Europe took off, pioneered by historians such as Claudia Koonz and Victoria de Grazia. This volume makes an exciting contribution to the evolving body of work based upon these earlier studies, bringing emerging scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe alongside that of more established Western European historiography on the topic. Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919-45 features fourteen essays covering Serbia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, and Poland in addition to Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Britain, and a conclusion that pulls together a European-wide perspective. As a whole, the volume provides a compelling comparative examination of this important topic through current research, literature reviews, and dialogue with existing debates. The essays cast new light on questions such as women's responsibility for the collapse of democracy in interwar Europe, the interaction between the women's movement and the extreme right, and the relationships between conceptions of national identity and gender. Kevin Passmore is a lecturer in history at Cardiff University and author of Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
[Photograph 2012.201.B1042.0028]
No full textPhotograph used for a story in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Caption: "Everything must be clean and shiny for the honor guard. Pfc. Steven L. Passmore, kneeling, of Tulsa, and Pfc. Earmont H. Bomhoff, El Reno, prepare a horse-drawn Caisson carriage for a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. The two soldiers are stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia.
A Vision of Collaborative Verification-Driven Engineering of Hybrid Systems
No full textHybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important model for real-world physical systems. The key challenge is how to ensure their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to ensure safety seem to be model-driven engineering to develop hybrid systems in a well-defined and traceable manner, and formal verification to prove their correctness. Their combination forms the vision of verification-driven engineering. Despite the remarkable progress in automating formal verification of hybrid systems, the construction of proofs of complex systems often requires significant human guidance, since hybrid systems verification tools solve undecidable problems. It is thus not uncommon for verification teams to consist of many players with diverse expertise. This paper introduces a verification-driven engineering toolset that extends our previous work on hybrid and arithmetic verification with tools for (i) modeling hybrid systems, (ii) exchanging and comparing models and proofs, and (iii) managing verification tasks. This toolset makes it easier to tackle large-scale verification tasks
The influence of directionality bias on vision for action and vision for perception
No full textI investigated the sensitivity of the visual system to directionality bias by manipulating the likely direction of a horizontally moving target. I went on to examine the generalizability of directionality bias on the visual system during perceptual tasks, for which an action was not required. Forty-eight participants completed a visuomotor task and two line bisections tests, one prior to the visuomotor task and one after it. The visuomotor task consisted of a two-dimensional rectangular target appearing in the middle of a monitor and horizontally translating toward the right or the left. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups, a rightward bias group (75% R – 25% L) or a leftward bias group (25% R – 75% L). Results revealed that participants did not make anticipatory fixations in the direction in which the target would move prior to its movement. However, I did observe that following the movement of the target, participants became better at following the target closer to its center, as they completed more trials. Nevertheless, for both, fixations before and after target movement onset, there was no significant difference between the rightward and leftward bias groups. Finally, contrary to my hypothesis, the line bisection task revealed a rightward bias, which was not affected by the directional bias introduced during the visuomotor task. These results suggest that a 75% – 25% bias ratio is not sufficient to cause the visuomotor system to produce anticipatory fixation behaviour. Moreover, the results of the line bisection task did not show pseudoneglect, but instead a rightward bias, providing support for the interhemispheric competition theory of visual attention.Research Manitoba (Master’s Studentship Award)February 202
THE ASSESSMENT AND PROCESSING OF TACTILE SENSORY LEARNING
Get PDFThis dissertation examined perturbation effects during complex tactile information transmission. The four experiments provide evidence regarding sensory and information processing demands in early stages of complex tactile learning. Experiment 1 established complex tactile learning behavioural performance. Vibrotactile stimuli representing Morse code letters were communicated to participants with or without induced perturbation to the finger of letter reception. Response performance was measured and augmented feedback was provided retroactively. Perturbation conditions lead to poor performance during tactile acquisition, but improved performance during application of knowledge. Experiment 2 determined if the experiment 1 results demonstrated masking or response competition paradigms. Target “masking” is the reduced ability to detect or interpret a stimuli pattern by presentation of other information (Craig, 1985; Verrillo, 1985). Response competition is the competition or distraction from target response generation by secondary stimuli (Craig, 2000; Bolanowski et al., 2000). Experiment 2 tested response competition by spatially separating the perturbation and tactile information delivery sites. Experiments 3 and 4 served to replicate behavioural acquisition data from experiments 1 and 2. They also extended the findings of the first two experiments by introducing neurophysiological measurement to reflect the changes associated with the two perturbation conditions. The study discerned whether the masking and response competition paradigms from experiments 1 and 2 were predominantly impacting the peripheral or central information processing. Results from the four studies collectively demonstrate that increased demands are placed on the sensory system during early stages of complex tactile learning when perturbation is spatially congruent with tactile information delivery. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that attention does not supersede spatial location of perturbation, and perturbation location is paramount to yield sufficient interference to impede acquisition yet lead to enhanced knowledge retention and transfer. Experiments 3 and 4 determined that cortical information processing associated with complex tactile information acquisition are neurophysiologically differentiated when relative locations of meaningful and perturbation stimuli are congruent or spatially separated. The findings from this dissertation serve as an advancement of our understanding of masking and response competition phenomenon as they pertain to complex tactile learning.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD
Pixel Detectors
Get PDFResults of the characterisation of three different pixel detectors are presented. The first is an energy resolving detector (ERD1) which has been characterised using laboratory sources and the synchrotron radiation source (SRS) at Daresbury. The ERD1 is a 16 by 16 array of 300 mum by 300 mum square pixels, the detector is 300 mum thick Si and is bump-bonded using gold studs to the RAL PAC5 read out. Energy spectra and diffraction lines acquired at the SRS are presented and show the imaging and simultaneous spectroscopic capabilities of the ERD1. The energy resolution was investigated using X- rays of energies between 6 and 60 keV from laboratory sources. The achieved full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of the photo peaks is in the range of 300 eV to 500 eV with an electronic noise of 227 +/-43 eV. Charge sharing was investigated for different energy X-rays and is shown to be significant with up to around 10% of events sharing some charge. The second detector is a large area detector (LAD1). It is based on single photon counting and is designed for imaging in synchrotron radiation applications. Results of tests performed with a single chip module at the Daresbury SRS are presented. The detector is 300 mum thick Si with 150 mum by 150 mum pixels bump-bonded to an (RAL ALADIN) array of 64 by 64 read out channels. The spatial resolution was determined using the modulation transfer function (MTF) with a result of (5.1 +/- 0.1) 1p/mm at an MTF value of 0.3. Theoretical studies of the spatial resolution predict a value of 5.3 1p/mm. The image noise in photon counting systems is investigated theoretically and experimentally and is shown to be given by Poisson statistics. The rate capability of the LAD1 was measured to be 250 kHz per pixel. Theoretical and experimental studies of the difference in contrast for ideal charge integrating and photon counting imaging systems were carried out. It is shown that the contrast differs and that for the conventional definition (contrast = (background - signal)/background) the photon counting device will, in some cases, always give a better contrast than the integrating system. Simulations in MEDICI are combined with analytical calculations to investigate charge collection efficiencies (CCE) in semiconductor detectors. Different pixel sizes and biasing conditions are considered. The results show charge sharing due to the limited mean free drift lengths of the charge carriers, the improvement of the CCE in unipolar detectors with decreasing pixel size and the "small pixel effect" which shows the improved CCE of the photo peak with smaller pixels. The third detector is a graphite pixel detector for ion beam profiling. The system was tested in the ion implanters at the University of Salford and Surrey. Results are presented showing real time profiling of the ion beam and the measurement of the beam current. The secondary electron emission was qualitatively measured for different beam energies and different positions on the detector. The loss of secondary electrons follows the profile of the detector and increases with higher energy ions
A Study of Performance Issues And an Edition of Alessandro Grandi's Six Books of Concertato Motets
Get PDFAlessandro Grandi (1586-1630) is a relatively unknown, yet significant figure in the development of seventeenth-century Italian sacred music. The dissemination of Grandi’s works, the number of reprints of his motets, and his inclusion in anthologies provide sufficient evidence that the substantial output of this composer is worthy of the public domain. If Grandi is to be performed, the creation of a reliable edition is essential.
This submission is comprised of a scholarly edition of Grandi’s six books of concertato motets; a selection of ten motets with fully realised continuo parts which are intended to exemplify my research and enable others to apply these techniques to similar motets; an audio recording of a recital given in order to demonstrate the findings of my research; an accompanying study of related performance issues, including ornamentation, pitch, temperament, transposition, continuo style, figured bass, and instrumentation; and a historiographical study of the dissemination of the small-scale concertato motet across Europe, which has ultimately guided my choice of source material.
Mine is the first complete edition of Grandi’s six books of concertato motets. During the course of my study, the American Institute of Musicology, led by Steven Saunders and Jeffrey Kurtzman, has also begun work on another complete edition, of which two volumes have been published to date. While my main priority continues to be the provision of a scholarly edition, I have also supplemented this by including examples of my unique continuo realisations, as practised and tested in performance. The following chapters are intended to accompany the edition, and provide a directive, from which the findings of my research may be applied to future performances. This research endeavours to bring the works of Grandi to the forefront of historical performance practice, so that performers worldwide may access these obscure gems of the early seventeenth century
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