Development of a prototype multi-processing interactive software invocation system

The Interactive Software Invocation System (NASA-ISIS) was first transported to the M68000 microcomputer, and then rewritten in the programming language Path Pascal. Path Pascal is a significantly enhanced derivative of Pascal, allowing concurrent algorithms to be expressed using the simple and elegant concept of Path Expressions. The primary results of this contract was to verify the viability of Path Pascal as a system's development language. The NASA-ISIS implementation using Path Pascal is a prototype of a large, interactive system in Path Pascal. As such, it is an excellent demonstration of the feasibility of using Path Pascal to write even more extensive systems. It is hoped that future efforts will build upon this research and, ultimately, that a full Path Pascal/ISIS Operating System (PPIOS) might be developed

Awakening Creative Behavior: Contributions from the Rudolf Steiner Method

In my efforts to understand the fundamental elements of Rudolf Steiner’s (Waldorf) Educational Philosophy for the purposes of writing this thesis, I realized early on that the process of attaining such understanding would necessarily require much more than reading and comprehension on an abstract, intellectual level. In order that I might experience the principles of Waldorf Education in motion, as they were designed to be experimented, I would need to immerse myself into the experience of the arts and self-study with my mind, physical body and emotions, as well as to read and study the works of those how understand Waldorf Education. My role as researcher, then, required that I become a participant-observer, in order that I might explain Waldorf Education through my own personal involvement and experience. My research exploration included visitations at a number of Waldorf Schools in the New England area, to observe first, sixth, eighth and high school classes. Subjects ranged from Geometry and Music to Bookbinding, Weaving, American Studies and Woodcarving. I was able to conduct informal interviews of Waldorf students, parents and teachers during my travels. In addition to visiting schools, I participated in quite a number of workshops and seminars designed for Waldorf..

A Curriculum for Gifted Secondary Science Students

What curriculum can be developed which would provide enrichment for gifted secondary science students, integrate the science disciplines, and provide a format for research? The purpose of this project is to develop a curriculum which would provide enrichment for gifted secondary science students, integrate the natural science disciplines, and provide a format for student research

The rhetoric of Pascal. A study of Pascal's "Art of Persuasion" with particular reference to the Provinciales and the Pensees

Pascal's essays De l'esprit geometrique and De l'art de persuader, together with fragments found amongst his notes for an Apology, constitute his literary theory or Rhetoric. This Rhetoric is basically psychological. Pascal recognises that in order to persuade his reader he must sway his emotions as well as convince him intellectually. The character or temperament of the person or group to be persuaded determines the adoption of a particular method. This theory is essentially similar to Ancient Rhetoric. Though the Ancients tend to be remembered only for their lists of figures and tropes, they also emphasised the orator's need, to vary his approach according to his audience, devoting as much space to "moving the passions" as to "proof". Analysis of both the Provinciales and the Pensees - aimed primarily at the honnetes gens shows how Pascal put his precepts into practice. In the Provinciales he does not simply, as critics sometimes suggest, present his reader with models of logical and cogent reasoning. By the extensive use of irony, invective, ridicule, innuendo and all the standard means of disparagement he builds up an atmosphere of hostility to the Jesuit cause and conditions his reader's reaction against it. In apologetics he rejects metaphysical proofs: intellectual conviction alone, he fears, leads todeism and not Christianity. Though he makes some appeal to the unbeliever's reason, he seeks especially to induce in him certain moods and to convince him emotionally of the desirability of belief in the Christian god. He belongs to the Augustinian tradition of apologetics. The Provinciales and the Pensees are linked by Pascal's forceful and ardently religious temperament, which is reflected in his Rhetoric. In the Provinciales his personality is an asset: in the Pensees it modifies his success as an apologist, but raises him, occasionally, to the stature of poet.<p

SAGA: A project to automate the management of software production systems

The SAGA system is a software environment that is designed to support most of the software development activities that occur in a software lifecycle. The system can be configured to support specific software development applications using given programming languages, tools, and methodologies. Meta-tools are provided to ease configuration. The SAGA system consists of a small number of software components that are adapted by the meta-tools into specific tools for use in the software development application. The modules are design so that the meta-tools can construct an environment which is both integrated and flexible. The SAGA project is documented in several papers which are presented

EOS: A project to investigate the design and construction of real-time distributed embedded operating systems

The EOS project is investigating the design and construction of a family of real-time distributed embedded operating systems for reliable, distributed aerospace applications. Using the real-time programming techniques developed in co-operation with NASA in earlier research, the project staff is building a kernel for a multiple processor networked system. The first six months of the grant included a study of scheduling in an object-oriented system, the design philosophy of the kernel, and the architectural overview of the operating system. In this report, the operating system and kernel concepts are described. An environment for the experiments has been built and several of the key concepts of the system have been prototyped. The kernel and operating system is intended to support future experimental studies in multiprocessing, load-balancing, routing, software fault-tolerance, distributed data base design, and real-time processing

A decade of policy developments in equal opportunities in employment and housing

Includes bibliographical references.Phyllis A. Wallace

Pascal's scale of values

Pascal's wonderment at nature's immensity, and his insistence on its underlying continuity, attest its value for him. The description of nature as a coherent system knowable through geometry indicates that it is intelligible; but Pascal's failure to develop this conception, together with his opposition to cosmological speculation, shows that he sets little store by any mathematical view of nature. The idea of nature which predominates in his writings is of a continuously active process. Although geometry does not therefore provide the key to the understanding of nature, it remains for Pascal a valuable instrument in the demonstration and discovery of truth. Assertions as to the superior value of ethics compared with natural science point to a watershed in Pascal's thinking. The 'utility' lacking in science is found in "honnetete"; but the fluctuating estimate of nature as ethical norm makes it impossible to determine what value it has in this respect. Rascal himself conceives of "morale" as rightly dominated by man's 'end', for it is its relation to this 'end' which determines the moral worth of any act. Dualism is the keynote of Pascal's estimate of both natural law and justice; and he considers that pursuit of the general good, which should constitute the basis of society, has been superseded since the Fall by "amour-propre". Peace continues as the supreme political value only so long as it tends to security of property. The Church's superiority over secular institutions derives from the socializing agency of grace, which enables men to live together in the condition of "ordre" which "amour-propre" precludes in secular society. The 'three orders' form the framework of Pascal's scale of values - the different orders represent at once categories of value and orders of being. And the relativism which characterizes Pascal's estimates of value results from treating value as a perspective of the orders.<p

Novel model of cerebrospinal fluid dynamics based on hemodynamically driven cyclic brain compliance variation

This study provides a novel explanation for the CerebrQ-Spinal Fluid (CSF) flow pattern observed in phase contrast cine-MRJ studies. CSF dynamics has been traditionally explained as a bulk flow from the site of production to the site of absorption. Studies done with phase contrast cine-MRI show a more complex CSF movement, that is not explainable by the bulk flow paradigm. This study describes a mechanism explaining how the energy delivered by the heart in each cycle is responsible not only for the blood flow, but also for the CSF circulation. This mechanism is based on a cyclic variation of brain compliance, dependent on the blood volume inside the brain vessels. As the cardiac cycle changes the blood volume inside the vessels, it also conditions a compliance cycle of the brain tissue. For better comprehension of the mechanism, a conceptual model, mathematical model and computer model are described. To capture the essence of CSF dynamics a three compartmental model is created representing: the ventricular system, the intracranial subarachnoideal space, and the spinal subarachnoideal space. The implemented driving function represents the blood volume variation with time produced by the cardiac cycle. In turn it detennines cyclic changes in brain parenchyma compliance. Brain parenchyma compliance changes as a function of the blood volume inside the brain vessels; therefore, during systole the compliance diminishes, during diastole compliance increases. As brain tissue compliance changes the CSF volume inside each compartment is redistributed. Cyclic compliance variation of brain tissue creates a pulsatile CSF flow. The CSF dynamics model is also used for the analysis of altered CSF dynamics; Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus and Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension are explained as a consequence of altered compliance of the brain tissue