Don’t Beep At Me: Using Google Maps APIs to Reduce Driving Anxiety

Stress while driving is a significant issue that causes automobile incidents. Along with the physical injuries, there is often baggage and trauma associated with these accidents. Wearable health monitoring technology, like Smartwatches, has a real possibility to help people further understand the stress inducing processes of driving. Thus to help with this issue, I propose a Google Maps app extension called: Don\u27t Beep At Me . This project creates a map that is layered by heart rate instead of speed limit and has great potential to be useful for reducing driving anxiety

Navigable Networks as Nash Equilibria of Navigation Games

The common sense suggests that networks are not random mazes of purposeless connections, but that these connections are organised so that networks can perform their functions well. One function common to many networks is targeted transport or navigation. Using game theory, here we show that minimalistic networks designed to maximise the navigation efficiency at minimal cost share basic structural properties with real networks. These idealistic networks are Nash equilibria of a network construction game whose purpose is to find an optimal trade-off between the network cost and navigability. We show that these skeletons are present in the Internet, metabolic, English word, US airport, Hungarian road networks, and in a structural network of the human brain. The knowledge of these skeletons allows one to identify the minimal number of edges by altering which one can efficiently improve or paralyse navigation in the network

Autonomous Sailboat Navigation

The purpose of this study was to investigate novel methods on an unmanned sailing boat, which enables it to sail fully autonomously, navigate safely, and perform long-term missions. The author used robotic sailing boat prototypes for field experiments as his main research method. Two robotic sailing boats have been developed especially for this purpose. A compact software model of a sailing boat's behaviour allowed for further evaluation of routing and obstacle avoidance methods in a computer simulation. The results of real-world experiments and computer simulations are validated against each other. It has been demonstrated that autonomous boat sailing is possible by the effective combination of appropriate new and novel techniques that will allow autonomous sailing boats to create appropriate routes, to react properly on obstacles and to carry out sailing manoeuvres by controlling rudder and sails. Novel methods for weather routing, collision avoidance, and autonomous manoeuvre execution have been proposed and successfully demonstrated. The combination of these techniques in a layered hybrid subsumption architecture make robotic sailing boats a promising tool for many applications, especially in ocean observation

"...the whole river is a bustle some about their children, brothers and husbands and the rest of us about our salt." : the antebellum industrialization of the Kanawha Valley in the Virginia backcountry

The Kanawha River of West Virginia begins at the confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers. It runs northwest for 97 miles through south central West Virginia until it reaches the Ohio River at the town of Point Pleasant. The Great Kanawha Valley is an area long recognized for its rich resources. Although not always fully appreciated, the history of the valley is one of relentless and innovative exploitation of its bounty. The development of the Kanawha salt industry in particular, with its late eighteenth- early nineteenth century beginnings, presents itself as a valuable lens through which to examine the historical assumption of post-bellum Appalachian industrialization. An examination of the early Kanawha Valley salt industry exposes a valley near the nation’s frontier which relentlessly pursued the industrial development of salt and monopolized the mineral’s supply across swaths of the Great West. In doing so, valley salt-makers created innovations which are still the basis of oil and gas drilling today, severely degraded their environment, created a unique slave-labor community, and began a pattern of relentless industrialization of the Kanawha Valley which continues to this day. This thesis intends to illuminate this early industry in the Kanawha Valley as a way of chipping away at myths of Appalachia and place Appalachian industrialization’s beginnings far earlier than is commonly considered. The introductory chapter focuses on the historiography of the Kanawha Valley, West Virginia and more importantly, Appalachia. It is important to establish why the proposed paper is important in the context of other writings, but more importantly, to help explore how the Kanawha Valley fits with past and present ideas of the Appalachian region. Chapter one explores the Kanawha Valley as a focal point in Virginians’ dreams of a commercial thoroughfare stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi River through Virginia. This includes discussions the formation of salt domes beneath the Kanawha River, the necessity of salt as a food preservative, and the mineral’s role in early American society. The chapter then discusses Native American uses of the salt marshes in the Kanawha, European exploration of the Kanawha Valley, valley settlement, land speculation in the region, and the inception of the salt industry on the banks of the Kanawha River. Chapter two begins with the early development of the commercial salt industry and follows that development until approximately 1815. The purpose of this is to root the Kanawha Valley salt industry in the larger context of the rise of the Ohio Valley’s meat packing industry and the region’s role in the international salted meat trade. Chapter three explores the innovation which was integral to the industry, making the Kanawha Valley the site of a number of developments, techniques and inventions which remain fundamental to the oil and gas well drilling industry to this day. This exploration of innovation marks the progress of the salt industry as well as serve as a contradiction to stereotypes of Appalachia. Chapter four explores the nature of slavery that the Kanawha Valley salt industry relied upon. The Kanawha Valley salt-makers relied heavily on agricultural slaves leased from owners in eastern Virginia. This extremely heavy reliance on hired slaves for industrial work a mere forty miles from the freedom of Ohio suggests unique innovations may have existed in the nature of slavery. The industrial slavery of the Kanawha Valley not only suggests possible unique facets to bondage there, it also provides a new light in which to examine Appalachia, a region where slavery remains less studied than agricultural regions. The thesis conclusion, points out the uniqueness of the Kanawha Valley. This thesis does not intend to suggest the post Civil War industrialization if Appalachia is incorrect, but that it cannot be assumed. This thesis serves to chip away at the assumption that the industrialization of the region was a post-Civil War event

Historic Maps of Kentucky

Maps published frorn the third quarter of the eighteenth century through the Civil War reflect in colorful detail the emergence of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the unfolding art of American cartography. Ten maps, selected and annotated by the most eminent historian of Kentucky, have been reproduced in authentic facsimiles. The accompanying booklet includes an illuminating historical essay, as well as notes on the individuaL facsimiles, and is illustrated with numerous details of other notable Kentucky maps. Among the rare maps reproduced are one of the battlefield of Perryville (1877), a colorful travelers\u27 map (1839), and a map of the Falls of the Ohio (1806) believed to be the first map printed in Kentucky.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/1088/thumbnail.jp

Towards unifying spreadsheets with databases for ad-hoc interactive data management at scale

We are witnessing the increasing availability of data across a spectrum of domains, necessitating the interactive ad-hoc management and analysis of this data, in order to put it to use. Unfortunately, interactive ad-hoc management of very large datasets presents a host of challenges, ranging from performance to interface usability. This thesis introduces a new research direction of manipulation of large datasets using an interactive interface and makes several steps towards this direction. In particular, we develop DataSpread, a tool that enables users to work with arbitrary large datasets via a direct manipulation interface. DataSpread holistically unifies spreadsheets and relational databases to leverage the benefits of both. However, this holistic integration is not trivial due to the differences in the architecture and ideologies of the two paradigms: spreadsheets and databases. We have built a prototype of DataSpread, which, in addition to motivating the underlying challenges, demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of this holistic integration. We focus on the following challenges encountered while developing DataSpread. (i) Representation—here, we address the challenges of flexibly representing ad-hoc spreadsheet data within a relational database; (ii) Indexing—here, we develop indexing data structures for supporting and maintaining access by position; (iii) Formula Computation—here, we introduce an asynchronous formula computation framework that addresses the challenge of ensuring consistency and interactivity at the same time; and (iv) Organization—here, we develop a framework to best organize data based on a workload, e.g., queries specified on the spreadsheet interface

The teacher's understanding of American explorers (Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, Byrd) including selections from journals plus bibliography of children's books

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Alessandro Malaspina and the voyage of disenchantment

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012Between 1775 and 1792 the shores of what is now Alaska and British Columbia were opened to European reconnaissance by a series of mostly Spanish expeditions. The most ambitious and prestigious of the Spanish expeditions was also one of the last; the Spanish hydrographic expedition of 1789-1794 --the Viaje Politico-Cientifico Alrededor del Mundo, created and commanded by Alessandro Malaspina. The Malaspina expedition was a technical tour-de-force that was meant both materially and symbolically to assert Spain's program of reform and modernization under the Bourbon monarchs, but Malaspina's liberal Enlightenment philosophy would in the end isolate him from the absolutist monarchy he served, dooming the results of the expedition to more than a century of obscurity and Malaspina to imprisonment and banishment. This thesis examines how European state cartography contributed to a competition for imperial space on the Northwest Coast and particularly how that space was shaped through the efforts of the Malaspina Expedition. A close examination of the Malaspina expedition and Malaspina's personal narrative opens a window on the distinctive Spanish imperialism of the late 18th century, and how the cartography of the region contributed to the territorial delineation of modern Alaska and British Columbia.1. Nueva Galicia and the madness of Minister Galvez -- I. The "Spanish Lake" -- II. Bourbon Spain -- III. José de Gálvez -- IV. Sovereign claims -- V. The naval division of San Blas -- VI. Bucareli and the northwest coast -- VII. Drake's legacy -- 2. The philosopher Captain : child of the enlightenment -- I. From Tuscany to Madrid -- II. An enlightened proposal -- III. The discovery and the daring -- IV. The changing tide -- V. Cataloguing the empire -- VI. The Maldonado relatión -- 3. Beyond the southern sea -- I. Cadiz to Peru -- II. The King's agent -- III. Esteban Martinez and the English Satisfaction -- IV. The redirection -- 4. Measuring the empire -- I.A war of maps -- II. Lines on a sphere -- III. Britannia conquers longitude -- IV. Spain's hydrography -- Conclusion : colliding empires and colliding visions -- I. North of Mulgrave -- II. Creating imperial space -- III. The road to Corruna -- Bibliography

Colonial failure in the new world in the sixteenth century: a French and German comparison

During the first half of the sixteenth century attempts were made by Europeans to colonise Venezuela and Canada, as the rush for land in the New World increased at pace. Yet these colonial attempts have largely been forgotten by history despite the legacies they left both for Europe and the American continent itself. There are two reasons why these ventures have been overlooked. Firstly, they were non-Iberian. Secondly, they both failed. The efforts of the Welser merchant-banking company to colonise Venezuela (1528-1556) and the French Crown to settle Canada (1541-1543) have been subordinated in the historical literature to the successful colonisation carried out by the Spanish and the Portuguese in the New World, which began at the end of the fifteenth century, and led to imperial empires. Indeed, the phenomenon of colonial failure as a whole has remained relatively unpopular amongst academics. Whilst some more “popular” failed colonies have been studied individually, there has been no comparative approach to determine the shared causes for failure amongst a number of unsuccessful enterprises during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This work shall look to produce such a comparative, using the Welser and French colonies as case studies, given their underrepresentation in the literature. It shall use the few available primary sources, as well as foreign-language studies, to give a detailed understanding of the factors that caused the colonies to fail. A lack of preparedness, a lust for riches amongst the colonists, and poor foreign relations shall be identified as the three main causes for failure, each of which could be applied to a greater or lesser extent to other failed colonies. These attempts at colonisation shaped the early settlement patterns in the New World, impacted upon the social and political structures of the native populace and led to considerable alteration of the natural environment. It is important that we increase our understanding of them

The Popes, the Catholic Church and the Transatlantic Enslavement of Black Africans 1418-1839 (Volume 16)

Mehr als 400 Jahre lang erlitten schwarzafrikanische Männer, Frauen und Kinder während des transatlantischen Sklavenhandels schlimmste Formen der Versklavung und Erniedrigung durch Katholiken und das westliche Christentum. Damals wie heute glaubte niemand an die tiefe Verwicklung der Kirche und des Papsttums in den schwarzafrikanischen Holocaust. Trotz jüngster Behauptungen des päpstlichen Officiums in Rom, wonach die Päpste jegliche Form von Sklaverei verurteilten, so auch im Falle der Versklavung von Schwarzafrikanern, verweisen neuere Studien innerhalb dieses Forschungsfeldes auf das Gegenteil. Die Kirche und die Päpste nahmen vielmehr zentrale Rollen in diesem schlimmsten Verbrechen gegen die Schwarzafrikaner seit Beginn der schriftlichen Dokumentation ein. Mithilfe zahlreicher päpstlicher Bullen aus den Geheimarchiven des Vatikans und einer Vielzahl an königlichen Dokumenten aus dem portugiesischen Nationalarchiv in Lissabon, strebt der vorliegende Band eine kritische und analytische Untersuchung dieses Aspekts des transatlantischen Sklavenhandels an, der über so viele Jahre von den westlichen Historikern und Gelehrten verschleiert wurde. For over 400 years, Black African men, women and children suffered the worst type of enslavement and humiliation from the hands of Catholics and other Western Christians during the transatlantic slave trade. Before now, no one could ever believe that the Popes of the Church were deeply involved in this Holocaust against Black African people. Despite the claims made by the hallowed papal office in Rome in recent years that the Popes condemned the enslavement of peoples wherever it existed including that of Black Africans, recent researches in these fields of study have proved the contrary to be true. The Church and her Popes were rather among the major “role players” in this worst crime against Black Africans in recorded history. With the help of a considerable number of papal Bulls from the Vatican Secret Archives and a great amount of Royal documents from the Portuguese National Archives in Lisbon, the present book is aiming to undertake a critical and analytical inquiry of this aspect of the transatlantic slavery that has been kept in the dark for so many years by the Western historians and scholars. The results of this studious but fruitful academic inquiry are laid bare in this notable work of the 21st century. Pius Onyemechi Adiele is a Catholic priest of Ahiara Diocese Mbaise and an alumnus of Seat of Wisdom Seminary Owerri and Bigard Memorial Seminary Enugu in Nigeria. He obtained his licentiate in Theology from the famous University of Münster and his doctoral degree in Church History from the renowned University of Tübingen in Germany. At present, he is a research fellow in the areas of African Church History and Enslavement of peoples as well as the pastor in charge of the merged parishes of Lauchheim, Westhausen, Lippach, Röttingen and Hülen in Germany