1,883 research outputs found
The amoebic growth of project costs
No full textIn the public arena, we often hear about projects that have suffered massive cost overruns. Often they are related to large public construction projects such as airports, bridges, or public buildings. Large overruns also exist in private industry. However, often these do not appear in the newspapers, so the public is not as aware of them. Of course, not all projects go badly wrong, but quite a few do, and frequently we find ourselves uncertain of the causes for such overruns. In this paper, industrial projects that overrun and overrun in a surprising manner are considered. In other words, the paper considers those many projects where the extent of the overrun is well beyond what might ever have been anticipated, even though what was going wrong within the projects was, for the most part, understood.The basis for the content of the paper (that is, the structure and lessons), are drawn from a postmortem analysis of many large projects as part of claims analysis, particularly "delay and disruption" claims for projects whose total expenditure appeared, at first look, inexplicable or surprising. The aim of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of how projects go badly wrong, when they do, and in particular to draw some lessons from this exploration that are likely to help all managers. The reasons for cost escalation are not just the responsibility of project managers.<br/
Spiralling Intentionally Towards Figuration
No full textDavid Treloar is an artist living and working in London who initially trained as a painter before adopting a multidisciplinary approach to his work. However, after becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the unresolved, detached influence of modernism in his abstract and sculptural work, he has returned to the foundations of his training, figurative drawing and painting. He creates energetic, gestural portraits partly derived from the simple joy of extracting the magic from observed form, partly in response to the trauma of condensing an evanescent object into a moment’s believable reality. The resulting works frequently pirouette between beauty and malaise, exploring the uncertainty and frailty of the human conditio
Behavioral considerations in group support
No full textA series of interrelated issues are presented that significantly affect the success and failure to provide facilitated group support for decision and negotiation.The issues are derived from the GDN experience of the author, accumulated over 40 years and hundreds of GDN interventions. After each issue is presented,the implications for facilitation and the design of a group support system are noted with reference to other chapters in the Handbook. While discussions of the issues refers to some of the well-established literature on the topic, they are not based on formal empirical analysis of interventions. The issues all raise behavioral considerations. In particular, it is suggested that, notwithstanding a recent focus on microanalysis in GDN, these issues are still worthy of greater research and debate within the GDN research community
annunciation of the Eden age
No full textThe annunciation of the Eden ageThe 'Annunciation of the Eden age' is a book explaining the mystery of the garden of Eden, the holy (prophetic) count of time, and many other secrets of the Bible.by S.O. McClun
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textToday the Church commemorates the life and death of two martyrs, Perpetua and Felicity, who were persecuted in Carthage in 203. The Roman emperor in Carthage had issued an edict that no one was to become a Christian. Vibia Perpetua, who was 22 years old, and her slave, Felicity, became catechumens. Later, they were discovered and imprisoned. Perpetua and Felicity sang songs and prayed to God even in their darkest hour. It is reported that they withstood torture with radiance and high spirits. They even gave each other the sign of peace standing before the executioner. Perpetua and Felicity handed over their lives because of their desires to live fully as Christians.||Today they remind us to hand over our lives for Christ as they did. Fasting is one way that we can hand over our wills and desires to strengthen our spiritual lives and glorify God. Both of today's readings speak about fasting as a spiritual practice, which was widely done among peoples as reported in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Today's readings put a twist on the spiritual practice of fasting. Instead of saying all fasting is good, the readings put fasting into perspective for Christians.|In the gospel reading, Jesus states that there is a proper time for fasting. And that time would not come for the disciples while Jesus was present. The author of the first reading from Isaiah also put conditions on fasting. The scripture states, "This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own." This reading sounds more like a fasting of our wills, so that we are not focused on ourselves, but rather setting free, caring for and serving the needs of others.|And so we find ourselves in the first Friday of Lent. Yes, Catholics are required to abstain from eating meat. Besides giving up meat today, have you been asked, "What are you giving up for Lent?" Are you doing the typical "give up chocolate, alcohol, or TV watching" for your Lenten fast? Both the commemoration of today's martyrs and readings suggest that we may want to hand over our lives to Christ in different ways. Perhaps we can fast in new ways this Lent that will have a dramatic change on how we experience Christ and those around us. Perhaps we can fast from those things in our lives that keep us from fully living as and being Jesus to others. We can set free those whom we have not forgiven, show love to those we take for granted, and serve those we see in need. We should also quiet ourselves this Lent and listen to God speaking to us in the whispers of our lives and hearts. God knows what kind of fast we most need this Lent, and listening to God, will make that clear. So let us be inspired by the lives of Perpetua and Felicity this Lent and hand over our lives to Christ with radiance and high spirits. Let us put on the mind and heart of Christ so that we can be free to love and serve others as Jesus did
Jack Alive / Martin Dead : The Location of the "Author" in Jack London\u27s Martin Eden
No full textThis essay is an attempt to read Martin Eden, Jack Londonʼs autobiographical novel, in terms of the inextricable relationship between the author and the protagonist. Critics have often taken the unbalanced plot and the lack of ironic distance between narrator and character in Martin Eden as the technical weakness of London, but this paper argues that the achievement of this novel owes a great deal to the attachment of London to Martin. The unbalanced structure is a necessary product of the severe struggle of the author to kill his romantic alter ego. // Martin, who aspires to win Ruth Morse, tries to cross class boundaries by making a career of a writer. Even after realizing the emptiness of Ruth, who turns out to be nothing but a typical figure of the bourgeoisie, he somehow persists in loving her. The notion underlying here is that, for Martin, love, career and art are fundamentally inseparable. He objects to the aestheteʼs view of Brissenden on account of his separation of art from career. Martinʼs identity and life consist only in the triunity of love/career/art; the alternative is the repudiation of life. Thus, the unnatural delay of his disappointment in love can be regarded as Londonʼs strategy to set the suicide of Martin as the necessary consequence of the story. // By finishing the story and killing Martin, London finally detaches himself from Martin, reconstructs his self, and, unlike Martin, survives as a professional writer. In this sense, Martin Eden is a story about “writerʼs self-reconstruction.
Papers on pragmatism
No full textChapter One: James is often accused of claiming that a belief is true just in case it is useful. The objections to this view are obvious. I offer a more sophisticated interpretation of James's theory of truth, and defend it from the standard objections. Chapter Two: I discuss Steve Stich's notorious claim that `once we have a clear view of the matter, most of us will not find any value, either intrinsic or instrumental, in having true beliefs.' I argue that Stich reaches this conclusion only because he makes some false assumptions about content-determination. I show that using an interpretationist account of content-determination we can explain the value of true beliefs. Chapters Three and Four: `Definitionalism' is my name for the thesis that the theorems of mathematics are a priori because they are entailed by definitions. I discuss two objections to this view: the `Kantian' objection and the Quinean objection. According to the `Kantian' objection, definitionalism must be false because existential generalisations can't be true by definition. According to the Quinean objection, the definitionalist's distinction between definitions and other statements is illicit, because it is not discernible in mathematical practice. I argue that the Kantian objection is misguided, but the Quinean objection is correct. Chapter Five: Elitists draw a distinction between two sorts of word: the elite and the plebeian. They claim that only by using the elite words can we describe the world as it is `anyway'; using the plebeian words, we can at best describe the world as it seems to us, with our own particular physiology, tastes and history. For the sake of argument I grant these claims, but then contend that we have no way of identifying the elite expressions.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Thomas Mark Eden Donaldso
Symmetry in gardens of Eden
No full textConway's Game of Life has inspired enthusiasts to search for a wide range of patterns for this classic cellular automaton. One important challenge in this context is finding the smallest Garden of Eden (GoE), a state without a predecessor. We take up this challenge by applying two techniques. First, we focus on GoEs that contain a symmetry. This significantly reduces the size of the search space for interesting sizes of the grid. Second, we implement the search using incremental satisfiability solving to check thousands of states per second. By combining these techniques, we broke several records regarding GoEs: the fewest defined cells, the smallest bounding box, and the lowest living density. Furthermore, we established a new lower bound for the smallest GoE.Software TechnologyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Songs of Eden
No full textSongs of Eden is a collection of short poems that were written during the Spring of 2021 semester as an individual study under the direction of Dr. Teresa Kennedy. The course itself was titled “Songs of the Fall” and fell under the category of ENGL 491. The name of the individual study is a nod to both the fall of man, and the tradition of epic poetry. As such, the project itself centers around the opening chapters of Genesis, focalizing on the persons of Adam and Eve. The work is divided into two main sections, each written from the perspective of these two biblical figures. In order to inform the theological dimension of the Songs of Eden, the author consulted works by St. Augustine of Hippo, Origen, Philo of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and the opening chapters of Genesis. The artwork featured in the background is portions of the 1504 engraving Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer
EDEN: A high-performance, general-purpose, NeuroML-based neural simulator
No full textModern neuroscience employs in silico experimentation on ever-increasing and
more detailed neural networks. The high modelling detail goes hand in hand with
the need for high model reproducibility, reusability and transparency. Besides,
the size of the models and the long timescales under study mandate the use of a
simulation system with high computational performance, so as to provide an
acceptable time to result. In this work, we present EDEN (Extensible Dynamics
Engine for Networks), a new general-purpose, NeuroML-based neural simulator
that achieves both high model flexibility and high computational performance,
through an innovative model-analysis and code-generation technique. The
simulator runs NeuroML v2 models directly, eliminating the need for users to
learn yet another simulator-specific, model-specification language. EDEN's
functional correctness and computational performance were assessed through
NeuroML models available on the NeuroML-DB and Open Source Brain model
repositories. In qualitative experiments, the results produced by EDEN were
verified against the established NEURON simulator, for a wide range of models.
At the same time, computational-performance benchmarks reveal that EDEN runs up
to 2 orders-of-magnitude faster than NEURON on a typical desktop computer, and
does so without additional effort from the user. Finally, and without added
user effort, EDEN has been built from scratch to scale seamlessly over multiple
CPUs and across computer clusters, when available.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figure
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