cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers in biosolids-amended soils
Creators: name: Gorgy, Tamer George Alexan
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2011

description: Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are added to many consumer products as flame retardants. Their hydrophobic characteristics and high n-octanol-water coefficients make them partition in organic media such us sludge and biosolids, by-products of wastewater treatment which are commonly applied to agricultural soils to promote crop growth or discarded in landfills. Biosolids-amended soils have been found to contain up to 7x10⁶ pg PBDEs/g dry weight, whereas leachates from biosolids and flame-retarded products in landfills, contained up to 4,000 pg PBDEs/litre. PBDEs in the environment could potentially cause serious health effects. Research was conducted to determine the concentration and mobility of PBDEs in biosolids, biosolids-amended soil, and clay liners used to retain PBDEs. A field study investigated the degree of PBDE contamination due to the application of biosolids at an agricultural site near Kamloops and an agricultural field in Totem Field at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. PBDEs were found to migrate downwards to depths of at least 0.85 m. Laboratory experiments determined leachability of PBDEs from biosolids. PBDEs sorbed on fine particles suspended in the leachate, allowing PBDEs to exceed their aqueous phase solubilities. Concentrations were much higher on ultra-fine than on fine particles. Leaching column tests demonstrated that PBDEs leached from biosolids-amended soils and migrated through the soils. PBDEs in soils upgradient and downgradient of solid waste facilities in Northern Canada varied widely from location to location. There was evidence that PBDE contamination in Iqaluit is due to long-range atmospheric transport, whereas that found at Yellowknife is mainly from the solid waste facility. Laboratory experiments showed that sand-bentonite partially retained PBDEs. The hydraulic conductivity decreased with leaching, and then gradually increased. The decrease is attributed to swelling, whereas the increase is due to shrinkage of the clay interlayer, owing to the hydrophobicity of the permeant. The research may be helpful in establishing regulations on land application of biosolids, regulating waste disposal and landfill design requirements.
Study of the decay of Zr-96 by isotope geochemistry and Penning trap mass spectrometry
Creators: name: Mayer, Adam John
Publisher: name: Graduate Studies
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Beta-decay
subject: Zr-96
subject: Mass spectrometry
subject: Physics--Nuclear

description: Double-beta ( ßß) decay measurements are a class of nuclear studies with the objective of detecting a neutrinoless decay process. 96Zr is of particular interest as a ßß decay candidate as it has one of the shortest ßß-decay half-lives and largest Q-values. In addition, it is also unstable against the fourfold unique-forbidden single ß decay, decaying via 96Zr->96Nb which then immediately decays to 96Mo. These properties thus designate 96Zr as a unique system to test nuclear theory. Prior to the work outlined in this thesis, two published measurements of the 96Zr half-life yielded quite different results. A geochemical measurement of the decay in ancient zircon samples resulted in a value of T(1/2)=0.94(32)x10^19 a. Conversely, a direct count rate measurement found the ßß-decay half-life to be T( 1/2,ßß)=2.35(21)x10^19 a. The geochemical measurement of the 96Zr half-life does not discriminate between the two decay channels and thus, in conjunction with ßß-decay count-rate data, could provide a way to measure the single-beta decay rate. The aim of this project was to study this system through a series of experiments combining nuclear physics and geochemical techniques. First, the single and double-ß decay Q-values were measured using the JYFLTRAP mass spectrometer. This measurement significantly improved the Q-value uncertainties over previous measurements, refining the underlying nuclear theory to improve understanding of the single-ß decay path of 96Zr->96Nb. A study of the geochemical measurement was then performed. Zircon can remain a closed system over its lifetime and is especially suitable for this investigation due to its high Zr content and low Mo content. A novel method for the separation of molybdenum from zirconium was developed to enable the detection of the small amount of accumulated decay product as an excess compared to the natural Mo isotopic composition. The 96Mo isotopic anomaly in a 2.68 Ga zircon sample was determined to be 107(40) ppm, which translates to a 96Zr half-life of (1.8(+0.7/-0.4))x10^19 a. With the 2νßß partial decay half-life known to be 2.35(21)x10^19 a, a lower limit for the single ß decay half-life was set at T(1/2,ß)=3.5x10^19 a.
Rezension: "Eroberung des Elfenbeinturms. Streitschrift für eine bessere Kultur" von Fabian Burstein
Creators: name: Gnoato, Davide
Publisher: name: Medienimpulse
Year: 2023

description: Fabian Burstein rechnet in seiner Streitschrift für eine bessere Kultur mit dem von Skandalen und Stagnation geprägten österreichischen Kulturbetrieb ab. Plädierend für einen neuen Kulturbegriff jenseits von Vergangenheitsverklärung und Beliebigkeit beschwört Burstein sowohl das (gesellschafts-)politische Potential der Kultur als auch einen hoffnungsvollen Silberstreifen am Horizont des österreichischen Kulturbetriebs.
description: Medienimpulse, Bd. 61 Nr. 1 (2023): Medienpädagogische Entwürfe der Zukunft: Nachhaltigkeit, Zukunftsvisionen und Science-Fiction
HYBRIDIZATION IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS – A CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A 2022 SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JIHI
Creators: name: JIHI Editors
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: History of ideas, Conceptual Hybridization

description: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas launches a call for papers on Hybridization in the History of Ideas. Deadline: March 15 2022
Going Green but Getting Nowhere
Creators: name: Wagner, Gernot
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2011
Subjects: Climatic changes
Climatic changes--Government policy
Climatic changes--Decision making

description: High school science tells us that global warming is real. And economics teaches us that humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend. Don’t stop recycling. Don’t stop buying local. But add mastering some basic economics to your to-do list. Our future will be largely determined by our ability to admit the need to end planetary socialism. That’s the most fundamental of economics lessons and one any serious environmentalist ought to heed.
Quantum singularities in static and conformally static space-times
Creators: name: Konkowski, D. A.
name: Helliwell, T. M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The definition of quantum singularity is extended from static space-times to conformally static space-times. After the usual definitions of classical and quantum singularities are reviewed, examples of quantum singularities in static space-times are given. These include asymptotically power-law space-times, space-times with diverging higher-order differential invariants, and a space-time with a 2-sphere singularity. The theory behind quantum singularities in conformally static space-times is followed by an example, a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker space-time with cosmic string. The paper concludes by discussing areas of future research.
description: 16 pages, no figures, 8th Friedmann Seminar, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 30 May - 3 June, 2011
Rezension: "Ein fernes Land. Szenen amerikanischer Kultur" von Franco Moretti, übersetzt von Bettina Engels und Michael Adrian
Creators: name: Pircher, Lorena
Publisher: name: Medienimpulse
Year: 2023

description: Der renommierte Literaturwissenschaftler Franco Moretti, der zumeist mit quantitativen Modellen der Textanalyse in Verbindung gebracht wird, legt mit seinen Essays anregende Annäherungen an Klassiker der Moderne vor. Über die Künste hinweg untersucht Moretti namhafte Beispiele aus Literatur, Film und Bildender Kunst in vergleichender Manier und eröffnet für Fachwelt wie auch für eine breite Leserschaft faszinierende Einblicke in nur vermeintlich bereits erschöpfend behandelte Werke. Die Romanistin Lorena Pircher stellt Morettis ursprünglich als Vorlesungen konzipierte Texte in den Kontext seines innovativen wissenschaftlichen Wirkens und arbeitet die Stärken bzw. Leerstellen seiner Untersuchungen heraus.
description: Medienimpulse, Bd. 61 Nr. 1 (2023): Medienpädagogische Entwürfe der Zukunft: Nachhaltigkeit, Zukunftsvisionen und Science-Fiction
Wing Institute August 2021 Newsletter
Creators: name: Detrich, Ronnie
name: States, Jack
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2021
Subjects: Education

description: Welcome to the August newsletter. Historically, the newsletter has focused on identifying effective practices; however, there is growing recognition in the field that without focused efforts on implementation, interventions are not likely to produce the intended effects. Interventions are often abandoned in favor of another intervention that holds promise without ever knowing if the abandoned intervention was implemented with fidelity. In recognition of the importance of implementation, the focus of the newsletter is shifting to more explicit attention to the complexities of the implementation of effective programs. We look forward to continuing to explore Implementation Science and how it can facilitate educational outcomes for students in future issues of this newsletter.

While there are many implementation frameworks, in this newsletter we will examine research through the Active Implementation Frameworks (https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu/) perspective. Please see the figure below for a brief description of this framework. For more detailed information please see Fixsen, Blasé, & Van Dyke, Implementation Practice and Science. 2019. In Figure 1, there is the recognition that identifying effective interventions is necessary, but must be accompanied by effective implementation in an enabling context. If any of these elements is missing then achieving the intended benefits of the intervention is uncertain. From this figure, it is clear that implementation is a complex social process. More discussion of the Active Implementation Frameworks will follow in future newsletters.
title: Middle class parental aspiration and the transmission of advantage in contrasting locales
Creators: name: Bullough, L
Publisher: name: Bath Spa University
Year: 2021

description: This thesis investigated parental aspirations regarding children's futurity, how they relate to parenting styles and to what extent their sense of belonging to their neighbourhood might be underpinned by values, personal and intergenerational biography and resources. This study considered how families help to reproduce social advantage and disadvantage through the perspective of Bourdieu's conceptual framework regarding social and cultural reproduction, with the family viewed as a habitus generating institution. Taken from a series of semi-­structured interviews with parents of children at key transition points in the English primary school, qualitative data examined parental aspirations for children's futurity in three urban settings. In this thesis it is argued that locational habitus can be seen as a structuring device, mediated through embodied capital within education, cultural practices and family socialisation. Findings from this study illuminated how some parents are seeking to map the life of their children, particularly through the acquisition of specific personality traits which facilitate social fluency, adaptability and resilience. An original contribution arising from this research is how these desirable dispositions are transformative at times of transition and form the basis for future occupational competencies. Findings also propose changing parental attitudes to higher education with ambiguity regarding the pursuit of a university degree accentuated by high tuition fees, economic instability and uncertainty as to its value and whether future investment is likely to be suitably rewarded. No longer seen as purely securing educational advantage based upon the value of a 'good degree', parental rationale for university attendance is more explicitly linked to the accumulation of personal capital to maximise employability.
From STEM to SEAD: Speculative Execution for Automated Defense
Creators: name: Locasto, Michael E.
name: Stavrou, Angelos
name: Cretu, Gabriela F.
name: Keromytis, Angelos D.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2007
Subjects: Computer science

description: Most computer defense systems crash the process that they protect as part of their response to an attack. Although recent research explores the feasibility of self-healing to automatically recover from an attack, self-healing faces some obstacles before it can protect legacy applications and COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) software. Besides the practical issue of not modifying source code, self-healing must know both when to engage and how to guide a repair. Previous work on a self-healing system, STEM, left these challenges as future work. This paper improves STEM's capabilities along three lines to provide practical speculative execution for automated defense (SEAD). First, STEM is now applicable to COTS software: it does not require source code, and it imposes a roughly 73% performance penalty on Apache's normal operation. Second, we introduce repair policy to assist the healing process and improve the semantic correctness of the repair. Finally, STEM can create behavior profiles based on aspects of data and control flow.
Rezension: "A Lifetime Full Of Fantasy – Das Phantastische Kino: Aufstieg, Fall und Comeback" von Sassan Niasseri
Creators: name: Burger, Michael
Publisher: name: Medienimpulse
Year: 2023

description: Sassan Niasseri geht in seiner Monographie der Entwicklung des phantastischen Kinos nach. Mit Fokus auf vorwiegend US-amerikanischen Produktionen besticht die Studie weniger mit der historischen Entwicklung des Genres, sondern vielmehr mit seinem Detailwissen zur Herstellung der besagten Filme.
description: Medienimpulse, Bd. 61 Nr. 1 (2023): Medienpädagogische Entwürfe der Zukunft: Nachhaltigkeit, Zukunftsvisionen und Science-Fiction
Wave fronts, pulses and wave trains in photoexcited superlattices behaving as excitable or oscillatory media
Creators: name: Arana, J. I.
name: Bonilla, L. L.
name: Grahn, H. T.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
subject: Mathematical Physics (math-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Undoped and strongly photoexcited semiconductor superlattices with field-dependent recombination behave as excitable or oscillatory media with spatially discrete nonlinear convection and diffusion. Infinitely long, dc-current-biased superlattices behaving as excitable media exhibit wave fronts with increasing or decreasing profiles, whose velocities can be calculated by means of asymptotic methods. These superlattices can also support pulses of the electric field. Pulses moving downstream with the flux of electrons can be constructed from their component wave fronts, whereas pulses advancing upstream do so slowly and experience saltatory motion: they change slowly in long intervals of time separated by fast transitions during which the pulses jump to the previous superlattice period. Photoexcited superlattices can also behave as oscillatory media and exhibit wave trains.
description: 21 pages, 12 figures
Collecting and Controlling Distributed Research Information by linking to external Authority Data - A Case Study
Creators: name: Latif, Atif
name: Borst, Timo
name: Tochtermann, Klaus
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: With respect to the world wide web, scientific information has become distributed and often redundantly held on different server locations. The vision of a current research information system (CRIS) as an environment for constant monitoring and tracking of a researcher's output has become vivid, but still fighting with issues like legacy information and institutional repository structures to be established yet. We therefore suggest to gather those scattered research information through identifying its authors by means of authority data already associated with them. We introduce author pages as a proof-of-concept application collecting research information not only from a local source such as an institutional repository, but also from other external bibliographic sources.
Financial Market Imperfections and Business Cycles
Creators: name: Greenwald, Bruce C.
name: Stiglitz, Joseph E.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 1993
Subjects: Economics

description: Because of financial market imperfections, such as those generated by asymmetric information in financial markets, which lead to breakdowns in markets, like that for equity, in which risks are shared, firms act in a risk-averse manner. The resulting macroeconomic model accounts for many widely observed aspects of actual business cycles: (a) cyclical movements in real product wages, (b) cyclical patterns of output and investment including inventories, (c) sensitivity of the economy to small perturbations, and (d) persistence. More downward flexibility in wages and prices may exacerbate the plight of an economy that is in a deep recession.
Holographic Thermalization with Chemical Potential
Creators: name: Caceres, Elena
name: Kundu, Arnab
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We study the thermalization of a strongly coupled quantum field theory in the presence of a chemical potential. More precisely, using the holographic prescription, we calculate non- local operators such as two point function, Wilson loop and entanglement entropy in a time- dependent background that interpolates between AdSd+1 and AdSd+1 -Reissner-Nordström for d = 3, 4. We find that it is the entanglement entropy that thermalizes the latest and thus sets a time-scale for equilibration in the field theory. We study the dependence of the thermalization time on the probe length and the chemical potential. We find an interesting non-monotonic behavior. For a fixed small value of T l and small values of μ/T the thermalization time decreases as we increase μ/T, thus the plasma thermalizes faster. For large values of μ/T the dependence changes and the thermalization time increases with increasing μ/T . On the other hand, if we increase the value of T l this non-monotonic behavior becomes less pronounced and eventually disappears indicating two different regimes for the physics of thermalization: non-monotonic dependence of the thermalization time on the chemical potential for T l << 1 and monotonic for T l >> 1.
description: 49 pages, v2 references added, typo corrected
Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets
Creators: name: Stiglitz, Joseph E.
name: Greenwald, Bruce C.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 1986
Subjects: Economics

description: This paper presents a simple, general framework for analyzing externalities in economies with incomplete markets and imperfect information. By identifying the pecuniary effects of these externalities that net out, the paper simplifies the problem of determining when tax interventions are Pareto improving. The approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained Pareto optima. It can also lead to simple tests, based on readily observable indicators of the efficacy of particular tax policies in situations involving adverse selection, signaling, moral hazard, incomplete contingent claims markets, and queue rationing equilibria.
MOESM1 of Influence of UGT1A1 polymorphisms on the outcome of acute myeloid leukemia patients treated with cytarabine-base regimens
Creators: name: Chen, Peng
name: Zhu, Ke-Wei
name: Zhang, Dao-Yu
name: Yan, Han
name: Liu, Han
name: Liu, Yan-Ling
name: Cao, Shan
name: Zhou, Gan
name: Zeng, Hui
name: Chen, Shu-Ping
name: Zhao, Xie-Lan
name: Yang, Jing
name: Chen, Xiao-Ping
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Space Science
subject: Medicine
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Pharmacology
subject: Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Ecology
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Information Systems not elsewhere classified
subject: Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Cancer

description: Additional file 1: Table S1. Primer sequences used to genotype UGT1A1*28 and *6.
title: Real world risk in speculative fiction: how can cognitive poetics be applied to the design of sound-led text games which incorporate difficult information?
Creators: name: Bown, A
Publisher: name: Bath Spa University
Year: 2021

description: This thesis documents a research project that applies cognitive poetics to the writing, design and build of three playable prototypes that combine text with spatial sound. Each prototype tells a different part of one original work of speculative fiction, the theme of which is species extinction. In order to focus the research on how texts can incorporate difficult information, the prototypes are designed with reference to narrative transportation theory. Narrative transportation is a psychological framework for measuring how involvement in a story can cause persuasive information to be absorbed and beliefs to be changed. Throughout the thesis, three main lines of enquiry are pursued; how cognitive poetics can be used to develop an understanding of the psychological processes involved in reading, how this understanding can be used to create a user-centred writing approach, and how cognitive poetics can be synthesised with sound design theory and practice to create narrative transportation. In part one of the thesis, the psychological processes involved in narrative transportation are researched through the application of cognitive poetics to readings of multiple texts. A specific aspect of cognitive poetics - cognitive grammar - is explored in detail, allowing for a synthesis of theories of linguistic grammar with musical grammar and cinematic sound design practice. The second part of the thesis documents the iterative design process used to make the prototypes. During this process, design questions are addressed through the application of cognitive poetics, cinematic sound theory and musical grammar to the practice of multimodal writing. The user interaction designed into these prototypes is also informed by research into narrative transportation.
Exploring the Housing and Household Energy Pathways to Stress: A Mixed Methods Study
Creators: name: Hernandez, Diana
name: Phillips, Douglas
name: Siegel, Eva Laura
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2016
Subjects: Low-income housing
Energy security
Stress (Psychology)
Poor--Mental health
Environmental health
Public health

description: Chronic stress, known to contribute to negative physical and mental health outcomes, is closely associated with broader issues of material hardship, poor neighborhood conditions, residential instability, and inadequate housing conditions. However, few studies have comprehensively explored pathways to stress in a low-income housing environment. A mixed-methods pilot study investigated the concept of energy insecurity by looking at the impacts of weatherization and energy efficiency interventions on low-income households in the South Bronx neighborhood of New York City. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 low-income heads of household; participants also completed health, housing and budget assessments. Physical deficiencies, economic hardship, and health issues all interacted to directly and indirectly produce living conditions that contribute to chronic stress. Households with higher stress reported more health problems. Poor quality housing led to coping responses that increased expenses, which in turn increased stress around housing and energy affordability. This study provides further support for the connections between both health and the built environment and between low socio-economic status populations and net negative health outcomes. Energy insecurity is an important contributor to chronic stress in low-income households, and isolating pathways to stress where there is potential for interventions is important for future policy and housing-based strategies.
Localized states on triangular traps and low-temperature properties of the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg and repulsive Hubbard models
Creators: name: Maksymenko, Mykola
name: Derzhko, Oleg
name: Richter, Johannes
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We consider the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg and the repulsive Hubbard model on two $N$-site one-dimensional lattices, which support dispersionless one-particle states corresponding to localized states on triangular trapping cells. We calculate the degeneracy of the ground states in the subspaces with $n\le n_{\max}$, $n_{\max}\propto N$ magnons or electrons as well as the contribution of these states (independent localized states) to thermodynamic quantities. Moreover, we discuss another class of low-lying eigenstates (so-called interacting localized states) and calculate their contribution to the partition function. We also discuss the effect of extra interactions, which lift the degeneracy present due to the chirality of the localized states on triangles. The localized states set an extra low-energy scale in the system and lead to a nonzero residual ground-state entropy and to one (or more) additional low-temperature peak(s) in the specific heat. Low-energy degrees of freedom in the presence of perturbations removing degeneracy owing to the chirality can be described in terms of an effective (pseudo)spin-1/2 transverse $XX$ chain.
description: 11 pages, 6 figures
title: 'Stitched up' in the 'Conversengine': using expressive processing and multimodal languages to create a character-driven interactive digital narrative
Creators: name: Wilks, C
Publisher: name: Bath Spa University
Year: 2021

description: My practice-based research, which this thesis supports, explores the question: How can a convincing interactive character, with apparent psychological depth, be modelled in a playable digital narrative that adapts to reader choice? To this end I am building my own platform, the 'Conversengine', for authoring and, in future, publishing and playing text-driven interactive narratives that rely on enactment rather than narration. Currently, the platform consists of the 'Convowriter', the authoring tool, which I am using to develop 'Stitched Up', an interactive psychological thriller. Using the concept of the black box from second-order cybernetics with possible worlds and theory of mind from narratology, I show how combining these theories, mapping one onto another, provides a framework for not only thinking about the character-driven interactive narrative, but also a methodology for authoring one, in both natural language and computer code, and designing its richly responsive visual interface. This incorporates a unique emotional data visualisation system ('emoviz') to dynamically represent interactive fictional characters. This system is built upon the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance Emotional State Model (Russell and Mehrabian, 1977) and informed by existing psychological research into colour, shape and motion. I contend that abstract visualisations, coupled with the characters' text-based thoughts and/or speech, can eloquently express convincing mental and emotional behaviour. This provides the feedback in my cybernetic 'steering-a-course' game engine, which, whilst maintaining narrative coherence, allows the reader-player to steer their own course through the narrative. Creating an interactive narrative of this kind, which simulates psychological rather than physical action, requires a different approach to game writing, development and design. In part two of this thesis, I explore how the distinction between story and narrative discourse has practical implications for the creation of interactive digital narratives. I discuss how using existing game engines and tools can be limiting, and how this led to building my own interactive narrative engine with its own expressive domain-specific language. I show how the combined features of the 'Conversengine' offer a new way of representing complex interactive characters with psychological depth.
Exports and Financial Shocks
Creators: name: Amiti, Mary
name: Weinstein, David E.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2009
Subjects: Commerce

description: A striking feature of many financial crises is the collapse of exports relative to output. In the 2008 financial crisis, real world exports plunged 17 percent while GDP fell 5 percent. This paper examines whether the drying up of trade finance can help explain the large drops in exports relative to output. This paper is the first to establish a causal link between the health of banks providing trade finance and growth in a firm's exports relative to its domestic sales. We overcome measurement and endogeneity issues by using a unique data set, covering the Japanese financial crises of the 1990s, which enables us to match exporters with the main bank that provides them with trade finance. Our point estimates are economically and statistically significant, suggesting that trade finance accounts for about one-third of the decline in Japanese exports in the financial crises of the 1990s.
Quliaq tohongniaq tuunga (making histories): towards a critical inuvialuit archaeology in the Canadian western arctic
Creators: name: Lyons, Natasha
Publisher: name: University of Calgary
Year: 2007

description: Bibliography: p. 261-310
description: Some pages are in colour.
description: The Inuvialuit of the Western Canadian Arctic have been both underrepresented and misrepresented in the annals of written history. The present study has sought to redress this gap both theoretically and methodologically through the process of undertaking a community-based archaeology project with the Inuvialuit. This study was formulated within a critical perspective, with a view to developing a localized critical theory suited to Inuvialuit worldviews and social needs. Methodologically, the project aimed to enfranchise Inuvialuit into the process of (re)telling their histories through the identification and (re)interpretation of Inuvialuit material culture. Inuvialuit Elders superseded this task by situating their traditional objects in a rich tapestry of personal stories, experiences, and remembrances. They demonstrated how Inuvialuit approaches to the past are fundamentally different from western perspectives of linear history. The study explores the convergences and divergences between how the Inuvialuit past is portrayed by insiders and outsiders, and also suggests how such representations are constructed within present cu ltural and sociopolitical circumstances . Inuvialuit Elders and community leaders asserted that their identities are constituted by their knowledge of a shared history and by their relationship to the land, and that these representations of the past are critical to understanding their present and to negotiating their future. The relationship developed over the course of this project between the Inuvialuit and archaeological communities has made strides towards both a critical Inuvialuit archaeology and towards the decolonizing of archaeological theory and practice in the Canadian north.
Analyzing and interpreting deoxyribonucleic acid from multiple donors using a forensically relevant single-cell strategy
Creators: name: Sheth, Nidhi
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2024

description: The complexity of interpreting forensic DNA stains from multiple donors, often a cacophony of signals arising from unknown numbers of contributors (NOC), artifacts, and noise, presents considerable challenges. Traditional methods in forensic analysis rely on probabilistic interpretations prone to inefficiencies and potential inaccuracies due to mixed profiles and partial information of each donor. This study introduces a novel, forensically relevant single-cell strategy to address these issues. It used metrics for electropherogram (EPG) signal quality and statistical tests to optimize the process from extraction to interpretation. Our method combines multiple approaches of direct-to-PCR extraction, microfluidic DEPArray™ technology, and Model-Based Clustering (MBC) algorithms, to improve the reliability and interpretability of forensic DNA analysis. We evaluated four direct-to-PCR extraction treatments across 102 single buccal cells, measuring allele detection rates, peak heights, peak height ratios, and peak height balance for short tandem repeat (STR) markers. Statistical tests identified significant EPG metric variations among treatments. The Arcturus® PicoPure™ extraction method showed the most efficient, exhibiting the lowest median allele drop-out rate and the highest median average peak height, among others. We then adjusted reagent concentrations, specifically phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and proteinase K. Results indicated that decreased PBS concentrations from 1X to 0.5X or 0.25X significantly improved EPG quality metrics, while variation of proteinase K concentrations yielded negligible impact.Leveraging DEPArray™ technology, the research further incorporated a semi-automated single-cell strategy that was optimized for the forensic pipeline. Furthermore, an innovative framework was developed to streamline the interpretation of single-cell electropherograms (scEPGs) using MBC and a novel algorithm, EESCIt (Evidentiary Evaluation of Single Cells). This framework clustered scEPGs by genetic origin calculates likelihood ratios (LR) for each cluster and averaged these across all clusters to provide a comprehensive weight of evidence summary. Our analysis revealed that 99% of comparisons provided log LR values greater than 0 for true contributors, regardless of the mixture complexity. It significantly expanded the applicability of DNA forensics.In summary, this thesis demonstrates the feasibility and statistical robustness of a single-cell forensic DNA strategy. It provides an integrated approach for the probabilistic interpretation of forensic DNA data from multiple donors, improving both the efficiency and reliability of forensic DNA analysis.
title: Exploring stakeholder perspectives on contemporary return-to work strategies and practices for chronic pain sufferers
Creators: name: Wegrzynek, P
Publisher: name: Bath Spa University
Year: 2021

description: Psychologically and physically safe work is good for the health and well-being of most people including those living with pain. Chronic pain remains the second biggest reason for work absence, and is economically and psychologically costly to employees, employers, and governments. This thesis investigates the most effective strategies in promoting return to work (RTW) among employees with ongoing pain. Two reviews (one systematic, one narrative) found no conclusive evidence to support any treatment approach, although stratified, multidisciplinary interventions with workplace­oriented elements are optimal. Semi-structured interviews with employees with chronic pain (study one), occupational health physicians (study two), occupational therapists and occupational health nurses (study three) were analysed using thematic analysis. In study one, employees with chronic pain felt motivated towards RTW and adopted an 'active' role in the process. Social support played a pivotal role, although workers felt pressured to be '100% fit' upon returning. Employees felt expert in their pain experience, entitled to ownership of their care decision-making, and acted as knowledge conduits between stakeholders. In study two, occupational health physicians were frustrated with current RTW processes, perceived overworked GPs as unwitting saboteurs of RTW processes, and blamed systemic issues within the NHS and reduced resources for the lack of access to multidisciplinary interventions. Study three revealed that medicalisation of chronic pain hinders RTW, and primary RTW outcomes should be driven by workers' meaningful activity. Health professionals in study three adopt a protective role with pain clients, similar to the mentoring role suggested in study two. The thesis' theoretical framework, revised in the light of the empirical analyses, retains the biopsychosocial model of pain and the Job Demands-Resources model, and suggests that a successful RTW strategy for workers with chronic pain should be multidisciplinary, consider patients' active roles, their need for support, and adopt a flexible approach to compensation. Implications for practice include extending who does sick-listing and examining volunteering as an occupational outcome.
Features for segmenting and classifying long-duration recordings of "personal" audio
Creators: name: Ellis, Daniel P. W.
name: Lee, Keansub
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2004
Subjects: Electrical engineering
Information science

description: A digital recorder weighing ounces and able to record for more than ten hours can be bought for a few hundred dollars. Such devices make possible continuous recordings of "personal audio" - storing essentially everything heard by the owner. Without automatic indexing, however, such recordings are almost useless. In this paper, we describe some experiments with recordings of this kind, focusing on the problem of segmenting the recordings into different "episodes" corresponding to different acoustic environments experienced by the device. We describe several novel features to describe 1-minute-long frames of audio, and investigate their effectiveness at reproducing hand-labeled ground-truth segment boundaries.
A Comparison of Biomechanical Outcomes in Single Leg Squat and Vertical Drop Jump in Youth and Young Adults with and without a Previous Youth Sport-Related Knee Joint Injury
Creators: name: Lorenzen, Kristin Nicole
Publisher: name: Graduate Studies
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Biomechanics
subject: Osteoarthritis
subject: Knee
subject: kinematics
subject: kinetics
subject: Knee Injury
subject: Epidemiology
subject: Engineering--Biomedical

description: Objective: To examine the kinematic and kinetic differences during functional movements between youth and young adults with a history of intra-articular knee injury and age, sex, and sport matched controls. Methods: In total, 186 youth/young adults (age 15-26; 100 female, 86 male; 93 matched pairs) attended a testing session in which kinematic and kinetic data were collected using a motion capture camera system and two force platforms. Joint angles and moments for the ankle, knee, hip, and trunk were calculated and between-group differences were analyzed. Results: No group differences were observed for either males or females in the primary outcomes (knee abduction/adduction angle, knee abduction/adduction moment) in either the vertical drop jump or single leg squat. Group differences were observed for the females during the vertical drop jump in the hip abduction moment on the index limb and the knee valgus angle, knee abduction moment, and hip external rotation angle on the non-index limb; during the single leg squat in the hip adduction angle on the index limb and the knee flexion angle on the non-index limb. Conclusions: Previously injured female participants demonstrate some kinematic and kinetic differences in functional movements 3-10 years following an intra-articular knee joint injury.
Evaluation of a pilot constructed wetland system as an appropriate technology for septage treatment in Cambodia
Creators: name: Chiew, Hannah
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2011

description: Septic tanks are one of the most commonly used forms of onsite sanitation systems in developing countries. However, lack of regulation on the design and installation and the lack of proper disposal for the septage generated may cause serious environmental degradation and pose serious public health hazards. This study presents the findings of a pilot-scale constructed wetland system in Cambodia for the treatment of septage for 8 months. After a 6-month Acclimatization Period, the system was operated at two hydraulic loading rates (HLRs) of 15.5 and 27.4 mm/day to evaluate the impact of HLR on the treatment efficacy. During the 8-month period, the system achieved mass removal efficiency of 96% - 98% for total suspended solids (TSS), 80% - 97% for turbidity, 61% - 78% for biological oxygen demand (BOD) and 61% - 90% for chemical oxygen demand (COD), but was less efficient in removing total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN), which exhibited efficiencies of 52% - 58% and 57% - 66%, respectively. The system also achieved 1.56 – 2.25 log reduction for E. coli and 0.49 – 0.81 log reduction for total coliform (TC). Although the HLR was almost doubled during the 2-month period, the effluent quality did not degrade appreciably in most cases, and caused little or no impact on the treatment efficacy. It is possible that harvesting prior to the start of the HLR exercise had an adverse impact on the eco system and de-stabilized the system, causing the results with lower HLR (or higher HRT) to be worse than expected. Another possible reason for the lack of difference could be due to the high variability of influent quality. It is possible that there is no apparent benefit in decreasing the HLR in this case. The k-C* , or first order removal model, was used to model the longitudinal concentration profile and estimated the removal rate constant. There were no apparent relationships between HLR and the removal rate constants in the k-C* model. The effluent may be suitable for localized and restricted irrigation with careful crop selection, or re-used with dilution due to its high nitrogen content.
Evidence for Three Accreting Black Holes in a Galaxy at z~1.35: A Snapshot of Recently Formed Black Hole Seeds?
Creators: name: Schawinski, Kevin
name: Urry, Meg
name: Treister, Ezequiel
name: Simmons, Brooke
name: Natarajan, Priyamvada
name: Glikman, Eilat
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: One of the key open questions in cosmology today pertains to understanding when, where and how super massive black holes form, while it is clear that mergers likely play a significant role in the growth cycles of black holes, how supermassive black holes form, and how galaxies grow around them. Here, we present Hubble Space Telescope WFC3/IR grism observations of a clumpy galaxy at z=1.35, with evidence for 10^6 - 10^7 Msun rapidly growing black holes in separate sub-components of the host galaxy. These black holes could have been brought into close proximity as a consequence of a rare multiple galaxy merger or they could have formed in situ. Such holes would eventually merge into a central black hole as the stellar clumps/components presumably coalesce to form a galaxy bulge. If we are witnessing the in-situ formation of multiple black holes, their properties can inform seed formation models and raise the possibility that massive black holes can continue to emerge in star-forming galaxies as late as z=1.35 (4.8 Gyr after the Big Bang).
description: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table
Rezension: "Ökologien des Lesens. Für eine erweiterte Philologie" von Hanjo Berressem
Creators: name: Burger, Bianca
Publisher: name: Medienimpulse
Year: 2023

description: Hanjo Berressem konzentriert sich in seinem kompakten Essay auf die Frage, wie eine gegenwärtige oder auch zukünftige Ökologie des Lesens aussieht oder eben auch aussehen kann. Der Literaturspezialist beruft sich bei der Entwicklung seiner durchaus komplexen Überlegungen auf eine Vielzahl theoretischer Positionen aus Philosophie, den Geistes- und auch Naturwissenschaften. Die Mehrzahl der von Berressem aufgeworfenen und adressierten Fragen bleiben dabei, trotz der Formulierung von Thesen, leider unbeantwortet. Für künftige einschlägige Forschungen kann sich diese Veröffentlichung aber als ein Buch voller Denkanstöße erweisen.
description: Medienimpulse, Bd. 61 Nr. 1 (2023): Medienpädagogische Entwürfe der Zukunft: Nachhaltigkeit, Zukunftsvisionen und Science-Fiction
Facilitating Student Learning Through Contextualization
Creators: name: Perin, Dolores
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2011
Subjects: Education, Higher

description: This Brief, based on a longer review that considers the hypothesis that low-skilled students can learn more effectively and advance to college-level programs more readily through contextualization of basic skills instruction, presents two forms of contextualization that have been studied: “contextualized“ and “integrated“ instruction. There is more descriptive work on the contextualization of basic skills than studies with student outcome data. In addition, many studies with quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of contextualization have methodological flaws that limit conclusions. Further, only a small number of studies are with college students. However, despite these problems, contextualization seems to be a promising direction for accelerating the progress of academically underprepared college students. The method of contextualization is grounded in a conceptual framework relating to the transfer of skill and student motivation; practitioners who use it observe positive results, and the available quantitative evidence indicates that it has the potential to increase achievement.
title: Developing a vigilant musical practice
Creators: name: Maia, H
Publisher: name: Bath Spa University
Year: 2021

description: This thesis, in the field of music composition and performance practice, presents the results of a practice-research project into performance validity and notational reliability in vigilant musical practice. From my initial inquiry into what constitutes a valid performance, three ground principles were observed: non-normative cognitive states (how the performer thinks); embodied multimodal imagery across a full effort scale (the images a performer draws with their presence); and inter-personal communication (the performer’s readiness to react to the audience’s presence) and the performance environment. These three interconnected skills form what I come to call 'vigilant performance practice'. This thesis aims to define a conceptual framework for vigilant music practice, at the stages of composition, of rehearsal, and of performance. In support of vigilant practice, a set of developmental tools and activities were constructed that promote each of the three vigilance skills. These tools and activities are developed in practice in a sequence of sixty-four scores entitled "Games for Musicians and Non-Musicians". This workbook promotes the development of vigilance skills in the context of improvised music performance in groups. "Games for Musicians and Non-Musicians" was rehearsed and performed publicly in several occasions. Reports of those events are presented here. Vigilant performance practice has the potential to be of use in music education and professional training, with different age groups (including children), as well as in other types of performance practice. It may be of use outside the performance environment altogether, in personal or community development.