War on scale : models for the First World War battlefront

This essay traces the evolution and use of military scale models during the First World War. The application of such models by all belligerents is characterized by an enormous diversity in scale, context, construction method and purpose. Between the two extremes of a full scale replica of the Paris agglomeration and the tiny boxed miniature of a POW prison cell, a whole range of military models can be distinguished. On one hand, the model production can be considered part of a long tradition of military terrain modeling, as is evident in the examples of relief maps and training models. On the other hand, the rapidly changing technological and tactical developments during the Great War –such as strategic aerial bombing, camouflage and submarine warfare—require the creation of new types of scale models. During the last stages of the war, the encapsulation of the model as research object in a laboratory, looked at through optical devices and studied through model photography, demonstrates how this technological progress paves the way for a scientific approach towards warfare. The evolution of the models thus illustrates how war was waged on a variety of scales and that its theatre was far from limited to the battlefield itself

The application of visualisation techniques for stratum and strata boundaries within the New South Wales digital cadastre

Population growth and trends towards urban consolidation have lead to a change in cadastral definition within the Greater Sydney area as high-density mixed-use buildings becoming more prominent. This has lead to increased potential of conflicts between end-users regarding boundary locations and the associated rights, restrictions and responsibilities and the vertical subdivisions are used to alleviate potential sources of conflict within developments in the form of stratum subdivisions, Torrens title lots with vertical restrictions, and strata subdivisions, strata lots existing within a scheme. However due to the complexity of these plans, specifically stratum subdivisions, the usability for the end-user is limited without access to surveying knowledge and practices. This dissertation sought to investigate the use of 3D visualisation within digital cadastral mapping to improve the end-users experience with understanding height limited boundaries and the relationship between lots within stratum subdivisions. Through the investigation of three case studies, each representing a different density of development with stratum subdivisions, and the modelling of the lots in Google Earth the research demonstrated how the use of 3D models improves the comprehension and ability to access spatial data through digital cadastral maps. The outcomes of this research suggest that the use of 3D models for height limited parcels can improve digital mapping and not to replace traditional surveying plans but provide a parallel format that is more user-friendly than the survey plan on its own

Use of the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature in NCAA FBS Athletic Training Staffs

Background: Heat illnesses present a major risk for athletes, especially football players. The NATA established recommendations to prevent heat illnesses that include measuring wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), but adherence to this recommendation is unknown. Methods: A survey was sent to all 130 Division 1 FBS athletic training staffs to determine their use of the WBGT to assess heat stress. Results: Of the 82 respondents (63% response rate), 59 use WBGT to assess heat stress. However, only 19 use it for summer conditioning. Of the 23 universities that do not use WBGT, 10 noted that extreme heat or humidity is not an issue where they are located. Conclusion:The majority of FBS training programs (72% of respondents) use the WBGT, but adherence to this NATA recommendation varies throughout the season (summer conditioning versus practice) and is likely influenced by the geographical location of the university

Inactivity/sleep in two wild free-roaming African elephant matriarchs - Does large body size make elephants the shortest mammalian sleepers?

The current study provides details of sleep (or inactivity) in two wild, free-roaming African elephant matriarchs studied in their natural habitat with remote monitoring using an actiwatch subcutaneously implanted in the trunk, a standard elephant collar equipped with a GPS system and gyroscope, and a portable weather station. We found that these two elephants were polyphasic sleepers, had an average daily total sleep time of 2 h, mostly between 02:00 and 06:00, and displayed the shortest daily sleep time of any mammal recorded to date. Moreover, these two elephants exhibited both standing and recumbent sleep, but only exhibited recumbent sleep every third or fourth day, potentially limiting their ability to enter REM sleep on a daily basis. In addition, we observed on five occasions that the elephants went without sleep for up to 46 h and traversed around 30 km in 10 h, possibly due to disturbances such as potential predation or poaching events, or a bull elephant in musth. They exhibited no form of sleep rebound following a night without sleep. Environmental conditions, especially ambient air temperature and relative humidity, analysed as wet-bulb globe temperature, reliably predict sleep onset and offset times. The elephants selected novel sleep sites each night and the amount of activity between sleep periods did not affect the amount of sleep. A number of similarities and differences to studies of elephant sleep in captivity are noted, and specific factors shaping sleep architecture in elephants, on various temporal scales, are discussed

A spatial data handling system for retrieval of images by unrestricted regions of user interest

The Intelligent Data Management (IDM) project at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center has prototyped an Intelligent Information Fusion System (IIFS), which automatically ingests metadata from remote sensor observations into a large catalog which is directly queryable by end-users. The greatest challenge in the implementation of this catalog was supporting spatially-driven searches, where the user has a possible complex region of interest and wishes to recover those images that overlap all or simply a part of that region. A spatial data management system is described, which is capable of storing and retrieving records of image data regardless of their source. This system was designed and implemented as part of the IIFS catalog. A new data structure, called a hypercylinder, is central to the design. The hypercylinder is specifically tailored for data distributed over the surface of a sphere, such as satellite observations of the Earth or space. Operations on the hypercylinder are regulated by two expert systems. The first governs the ingest of new metadata records, and maintains the efficiency of the data structure as it grows. The second translates, plans, and executes users' spatial queries, performing incremental optimization as partial query results are returned

Nodes and Hubs: An Exploration of Yiguandao Temples as ‘Portals of Globalization’

This paper takes a fresh look at the global spread of the Chinese–Taiwanese new religious movement Yiguandao (一貫道; the emic transcription is “I-Kuan Tao”) by directing attention to the concrete places where transnational connections and interactions actually transpire, i.e., temples, shrines, and other sites of worship. Emically known as “Buddha halls” (fotang 佛堂), these places range from large-scale temple complexes, to small niches of worship in people’s private residences. Yet, they all share the potential of becoming venues of transregional interactions through processes of migration, the circulation of personnel, and local outreach. I argued that we need to take the distinct character of these localities more seriously, in order to fully understand the global networks of Yiguandao groups. Through their specific embeddedness in both local affairs and transnational projects, these temples are not simply local chapters of the (mostly) Taiwanese headquarters, but instead they are “translocalities” or even “portals of globalization”—two concepts developed in migration and global studies to help understand the significance of place in the recent phase of so-called globalization. By exploring Yiguandao temples across the globe, this paper critically evaluated these approaches, and their usefulness for the study of global religions. Empirically, it drew on both print and online material, as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Taiwan, Vienna (Austria), California, South Africa, and Japan from 2016 to 2018

Resilient Design in The Tropics: An Overheating Assessment Method for Naturally Ventilated Buildings

As a consequence of global warming, overheating has become the main source of discomfort when speaking about the thermal performance of buildings. On the one hand, energy consumption together with the risk of heatstroke rises during warm periods and in extreme situations such as heatwaves. On the other hand, there is no broadly accepted method to measure overheating. Most of the literature is limited to a simple count of hours above comfort limit, disregarding the intensity and temporal extent of the periods, whereas other methods have a limited application since they were developed for a certain type of building and location. This paper proposes a novel method for overheating assessment in existing and projected buildings based on 5-step criteria. The objective of the process is to assess the intensity and the total time extent of overheating following adaptive theory and established limits of human comfort. The method consists in hourly counts of overheating hours divided into five segments (i.e. hours above 0.1°K, 1°K, 2°K, 3°K, and 4°K) using the upper comfort limit as a threshold. The output of the method thus provides a quantitative answer regarding overheating in a building, assessing not only the intensity but the range of the problem, allowing to evaluate different strategies to regain comfortable conditions for the occupants

How Close Do We Live to Water? A Global Analysis of Population Distance to Freshwater Bodies

Traditionally, people have inhabited places with ready access to fresh water. Today, over 50% of the global population lives in urban areas, and water can be directed via tens of kilometres of pipelines. Still, however, a large part of the world's population is directly dependent on access to natural freshwater sources. So how are inhabited places related to the location of freshwater bodies today? We present a high-resolution global analysis of how close present-day populations live to surface freshwater. We aim to increase the understanding of the relationship between inhabited places, distance to surface freshwater bodies, and climatic characteristics in different climate zones and administrative regions. Our results show that over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 3 km to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 10 km away. There are, however, remarkable differences between administrative regions and climatic zones. Populations in Australia, Asia, and Europe live closest to water. Although populations in arid zones live furthest away from freshwater bodies in absolute terms, relatively speaking they live closest to water considering the limited number of freshwater bodies in those areas. Population distributions in arid zones show statistically significant relationships with a combination of climatic factors and distance to water, whilst in other zones there is no statistically significant relationship with distance to water. Global studies on development and climate adaptation can benefit from an improved understanding of these relationships between human populations and the distance to fresh water