88 research outputs found
How Africa made modernism: African art and twentieth-century literature
No full textThis dissertation brings art history together with literary studies to show that African art has been an engine of—and not simply a passive inspiration for—modernist and contemporary literature. Although the relationship between African art and modernism has long been remarked, conventional histories often describe African craft as an inanimate source for the lively innovations of early twentieth-century Europeans. In the late twentieth century, this story continues: post-Independence African writing is often characterized as a belated inheritor of colonial modernism. This dissertation corrects both of these tendencies by expanding the debate across space, time, and media. It begins by considering the responses of British modernists Roger Fry and D.H. Lawrence to African art’s global circulation with that of their West African contemporary, J.E. Casely Hayford. The second chapter turns to the work of Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and Léopold Sédar Senghor to argue for the importance of an African-influenced sculptural aesthetic in both the African-American and francophone African worlds. The third chapter examines the work of Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka to show that their engagements with African art challenge received ideas about a modernist-postcolonial divide in literature. This dissertation’s fourth chapter pairs two contemporary writers: the experimental, postmodern South African author Zoë Wicomb and the realist Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Both authors share investment in the artisanal that extends to a general concern with materiality—in particular the materiality of books, and writing itself—that recasts the conventional understanding of Wicomb as paradigmatically postmodern and of Adichie as paradigmatically realist. It is the concept of creativity—of making—that ultimately emerges as the unifying idea from both the artistic and literary works that this dissertation examines. This dissertation shows that African artists, in direct and indirect ways, helped to create modernism across several continents.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Mark Jared Digiacom
Anchoring and probability weighting in option prices
No full textCumulative prospect theory argues that the human decision-making process tends to improperly weight unlikely events. Another behavioral phenomenon, anchoring bias, is the failure to update beliefs away from established anchor points. In this study, we find evidence that equity option market investors both anchor to prices and incorporate a probability weighting function similar to that proposed by cumulative prospect theory. The biases result in inefficient prices for put options when firms have relatively high or relatively low implied volatilities. This has implications for the cost of hedging long portfolios and long individual equity positions.Journal ArticleJEL Classification: G1, G1
A SYSTEM OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN TWO COMPUTERS USING NOVEL FREQUENCY SHIFT KEYING TECHNIQUES
No full textFrequency shift keying (FSK) is an old but powerful form of modulation that powered much of the early modems of the 1960’s, and the author felt inspired to make his own version of audio binary FSK modulation. He researched the general history and legacy of the Bell 103, a modem using FSK that defined telecommunication for the next few decades. Using research of the most common English characters of recent emails to determine which English characters should have the shortest bit length, a novel character encoding standard was created using variable bit rate. In addition, he has created a modulation and demodulation project in Python using this new encoding standard, with the addition of a mark and rest tone to apply the variable bit rate encoding to increase the throughput of transmitted data, and to eliminate noise that could interfere
Transitions and transformations
No full textA literary anthology 2018Volume 7, Manifest West Series, Western Press Books What changes, alters, undergoes renewal or metamorphosis in the West? The space shared and sparred-over in urban Oregon versus remote Colorado casts doubt on the concept of a true continuity to the west. Where and when do those frontiers, borders, or alterations in course occur? Each watershed and microclimate is a slight shift from the next, each city center and community hall a locus of both change and tradition, and the emotional landscapes can be as dramatic or serene as those on the map. Language can do some of the work of capturing that flux: tracking transition and transformation to get at the heart of a life lived. The poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction essays collected here raise as many questions as they answer about that often fraught, always exciting liminal space between the proverbial here and there, the now and now again. Manifest West is Western Press Books' literary anthology series. The press, affiliated with Western State Colorado University, produces one anthology annually and focuses on Western regional writing.Ars poetica; Springs without rains / Jessica McDermott -- Like the sun over primeval Earth / Jared Smith -- Cardiolesque (Phoenix, 2015); the cloud of unknowing / Cynthia Hogue -- Blue windows / Rick Kempa -- Gunnison Gorge / Tim Weed -- Mother, anthropologist; Disclosure: / Kierstin Bridger -- Hushed voices / Rick Kempa -- YUAN: the origin of a family name / Yuan Changming -- Shopping for light / David Lavar Coy -- Baseline / Caitlin Horrocks -- Like a living thing / Lisa Levine -- Saving Brownie / Tim Donovan -- No. 6; No. 13 / Mark Haunschild -- Midwestern Abecedarian / Andrea England -- December apples / Susan Brown Weitzman -- Main Street revitalization / Scott Siegel -- Ponderosa / Eric Aldrich
Developmental trajectories of marital happiness in continuously married individuals: a group-based modeling approach
No full textMost contemporary studies of change in marital quality over time have used growth curve modeling to describe continuously declining mean curves. However, there is some evidence that different trajectories of marital quality exist for different sub-populations. Group-based trajectory modeling provides the opportunity to conduct an empirical investigation of the variance in marital quality trajectories. We applied this method to analyze data from continuously married individuals from the Marital Instability over the Life Course Study (N = 706). Instead of a single continuously declining trajectory of marital happiness, we found 5 distinct trajectories. Nearly two thirds of participants reported high and stable levels of happiness over time, and the other one third showed either a pattern of continuous low happiness, low happiness that subsequently declined, or a curvilinear pattern of high happiness, decline, and recovery. Marital problems, time spent in shared activities, and (to a lesser degree) economic hardship were able to distinguish trajectory group membership. Our results suggest that marital happiness may have multiple distinct trajectories across reasonably diverse populations. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed
Research priorities in emergency general surgery (EGS): a modified Delphi approach
No full textBackground: Emergency general surgery (EGS) patients account for more than one-third of admissions to hospitals in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. The associated mortality of these patients has been quoted as approximately eight times higher than that of elective surgical admissions. This study used a modified Delphi approach to identify research priorities in EGS. The aim was to establish a research agenda using a formal consensus-based approach in an effort to identify questions relevant to EGS that could ultimately guide research to improve outcomes for this cohort. Methods: Three rounds were conducted using an electronic questionnaire and involved health care professionals, research personnel, patients and their relatives. In the first round, stakeholders were invited to submit clinical research questions that they felt were priorities for future research. In rounds two and three, participants were asked to score individual questions in order of priority using a 5-point Likert scale. Between rounds, an expert panel analysed results before forwarding questions to subsequent rounds. Results: Ninety-two EGS research questions were proposed in Phase 1. Following the first round of prioritisation, forty-seven questions progressed to the final phase. A final list of seventeen research questions were identified from the final round of prioritisation, categorised as condition-specific questions of high interest within general EGS, emergency colorectal surgery, non-technical and health services research. A broad range of research questions were identified including questions on peri-operative strategies, EGS outcomes in older patients, as well as non-technical and technical influences on EGS outcomes. Conclusions: Our study provides a consensus delivered framework that should determine the research agenda for future EGS projects. It may also assist setting priorities for research funding and multi-centre collaborative strategies within the academic clinical interest of EGS
Opportunities for Growth: Capitalization of Current Trends Relating to the Commercial Construction Industry
No full textabstract: Executive Casework, Inc. is a custom commercial mill working company based in San Jose, CA. Although the company originally only focused on cabinets, it has expanded to include custom reception desks and solid surface countertops to meet demand. The company founded by David and Mark Brown has humble beginnings, originally located in Mark’s garage. Over the last two decades, the company has seen astronomical growth buoyed up by the fast increase in commercial real estate in Silicon Valley.
However, the company is currently facing considerable uncertainty like many others in the industry. These resulting overhead costs, when paired with future uncertainty of demand created by geopolitical trends, work from home, and Covid-19, create a notable problem for Executive Casework, Inc. As such, this thesis will focus on strategic steps Executive Casework, Inc. can make to capitalize on current macrocosmic trends, as well as trends within their own industry. More specifically, it will be a strategic analysis identifying the key external forces driving the fluctuating revenues in the commercial custom mill working industry, followed by an analysis of these external forces (magnitude and longevity). We will end with a framework for capitalizing on these trends by organizationally and physically placing a company like our exemplar company, Executive Casework, in the best position to realize maximum profitability. (abstract
Beet borderland: Hispanic workers, the sugar beet, and the making of a northern Colorado landscape
No full textDepartment Head: Ruth M. Alexander.2002 Summer.Includes bibliographical references (pages 100-106).At the turn of the nineteenth century, the arrival of the sugar beet industry wrought change in northern Colorado. The sugar beet was a totally new plant-it was unlike corn, wheat, alfalfa and other crops that local farmers were familiar with. The biological characteristics of the beet required a particular style of intensive labor, indeed shaping the daily life of laborers. Hispanic migrants to Fort Collins worked and lived under the influence of the sugar beet, but they were not passive participants in the story; they effectively transplanted some of their cultural traditions and left their own imprint in the landscape. Two years after the turn of the twentieth century, the Fort Collins landscape still bears the mark of the sugar beet. Yet even as landscape tells history, history must help explain landscape. Adobe houses still stand in some old neighborhoods, suggesting that Hispanic inhabitants once played a part in the early chronicles of Fort Collins. This thesis endeavors to flesh out that story-to explain the origins of Hispanic beet workers; how the beet changed their lifestyle, bodies, and public identity; and in what ways they modified their environment
Black box and blue screen: Readerly entrapment and projection in Pale Fire and House of Leaves.
No full textIn many respects Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, first published in 2000, are strikingly similar texts. Indeed, Danielewski's novel can profitably be read as a contemporary re-working of Nabokov's archetypal metafictional model. However, where Danielewski constructs his text as an open-work or 'blue screen' onto which the reader is invited to attach any meaning that they see fit, Nabokov quite explicitly constructs his novel as an infernal 'black box' designed to confuse and entrap the reader and enforce his control over the text and its meaning. Nabokov's novel is fundamentally author-directed, while Danielewski's novel is expressly reader-oriented. Reading Pale Fire through the lens of House of Leaves allows for a radical renegotiation of the Nabokovian text. Danielewski's novel, I argue, allows us to recognize the points of instability latent in the unique structure ofNabokov's novel, and thus open up the text beyond Nabokov's attempted closure and thereby pave the way for new, innovative and creative readings
MICROSOFT POWER BI CASE STUDY: AN EFFICIENT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION
No full textabstract: This thesis investigates the use of MS Power BI in the case company’s heterogeneous computing environment. The empirical evidence was collected through the authors’ own observations and exposure to the modeling of dashboards, other supported external findings from interviews, published articles, academic journals, and speaking with leading experts at the WA ‘Dynamic Talks Seattle/Redmond: Big Data Analytics’ conference. Power BI modeling is effective for advancing the development of statistical thinking and data retrieving skills, finding trends and patterns in data representations, and making predictions. Computer-based data modeling gave meaning to math results, and supported examining implications of these results with simple charts to improve perception. Querying and other add-ins that would be seen as affordances when using other BI softwares, with some complexity removed in Power BI, make modeling data an easier undertaking for report builders. Using computer-based qualitative data analysis software, this paper details opportunities and challenges of data modeling with dashboards. Simple linear regression is used for case study use only
- …
