Entrepreneurship: The Why and How of Starting Your Own Business

What resources are available to the new entrepreneur? How do I know if my business idea is a good idea? What are the tax advantages of starting your own business? My research answers each of these questions in addition to many other questions the new entrepreneur might have. Part of my research insights were gained by experiential learning: I took a business idea of my own and took it through several key processes such as business idea generation, business model creation, market research, and advertising. I sought to learn more about the resources available to the new entrepreneur. In addition to the experiential process, l conducted traditional research by reviewing articles, research journals, books, and other materials that can help the new entrepreneur. In summary, it is extremely easy for the new entrepreneur to develop a business idea, conduct surveys, engage with customers, create a website, advertise online, and reap numerous tax advantages. Such tax advantages include increased deductions to income and tax-free income payments to the taxpayer\u27s children for their help in business operations

Direct Numerical Simulation of Transition and Turbulence in Magnetohydrodynamic Flows in Rectangular Ducts

In this work, a flow of an electrically conducting fluid is driven through a rectangular duct by a constant pressure gradient in the presence of a transverse, externally applied magnetic field: the flow is studied using the method of Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). This particular Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow investigation is important in the development of liquid metal blankets design, which is the proposed cooling system within nuclear fusion reactors. The duct walls parallel to the magnetic field are ideally electrically insulating, while the walls perpendicular to the magnetic field are ideally electrically conducting. This flow is referred to as a Hunt’s flow. In this work the emergence of time dependent flow and its transition to a fully developed turbulent regime is explored. By fixing the strength of the magnetic field and increasing the fluid velocity, a number of time-dependent flow regimes have been observed in the side layers, which includes Ting-Walker vortices, elongated vortical structures, fully turbulent side-wall jets, as well as singular and multiple side-wall jet detachments. It has been found that at low velocities, the time-dependant flow takes the form of TingWalker vortices, which develop in the side layers of the duct. For all but the lowest magnetic fields studied, the Ting-Walkers vortices completely disappear after a short initial transient time, being replaced by new, higher energy, complex, anisotropic vortical structures. Additionally, a number of new flow regimes involving jet detachment have been identified. This study also demonstrates that Hunt’s flow exhibits hysteresis behaviour, where different unsteady states are possible for the same flow parameters

Sparse experimental design : an effective an efficient way discovering better genetic algorithm structures

The focus of this paper is the demonstration that sparse experimental design is a useful strategy for developing Genetic Algorithms. It is increasingly apparent from a number of reports and papers within a variety of different problem domains that the 'best' structure for a GA may be dependent upon the application. The GA structure is defined as both the types of operators and the parameters settings used during operation. The differences observed may be linked to the nature of the problem, the type of fitness function, or the depth or breadth of the problem under investigation. This paper demonstrates that advanced experimental design may be adopted to increase the understanding of the relationships between the GA structure and the problem domain, facilitating the selection of improved structures with a minimum of effort

The Nomos of Border-Making Practices: The Chaco War, League of Nations and Indigenous Dispossession

The Chaco War (1932-1935) was a border war fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Chaco Boreal, a vast expanse of land in the centre of South America that was (and still is) traditional indigenous territory. This thesis analyzes a document published by the League of Nations on the conflict, The Report of the League of Nations Commission on the Chaco Dispute Between Bolivia and Paraguay, from the perspective of critical border studies. The League of Nations considered itself a disinterested third party arbitrator in the dispute. The central argument of this thesis is that the League was not a disinterested party and that its Report on the Chaco War is not a neutral retelling of the events of the Chaco War. Rather, the League’s Report is an expression of dominant Western border-making practices and exemplifies the way in which the border discourses of the interwar period failed to recognize indigenous sovereignty with respect to land, law and custom. This thesis therefore inquires into the relationship between borders and spatial imaginaries as embedded in three discourses of indigenous dispossession: the doctrine of just war, the legal principle of uti possidetis de jure and the legal concept of terra nullius. The work of Carl Schmitt is used to highlight the links between these border-making discourses and indigenous dispossession. Schmitt’s concept of the nomos is discussed in relation to the spatial order of the League of Nations and its attempts to uphold the Westphalian paradigm of international law while simultaneously claiming to be a humanitarian institution

Video Outpainting using Conditional Generative Adverarial Networks

Recent advancements in machine learning and neural networks have pushed the boundaries of what computers can achieve. Generative adversarial networks are a specific type of neural network that have proved wildly successful at content generation tasks. With this success, filling in missing sections of images or videos became a research topic of interest. Research in video inpainting has made steady progress throughout the years focusing on filling missing content in the center of a frame while research on video outpainting, which focuses on filling missing sections on the edge of the frame, has not. This thesis focuses on outpainting research by using conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) which apply a condition, such as an input image, to a generative adversarial network (GAN) in order to reformat traditional 4:3 video into a modern 16:9 format. This is accomplished by using a cGAN typically used for image-to-image translation and adapting it to generate the missing content from video frames. Although generated frames are not capable of accurately reconstructing missing content, this process is capable of producing context aware video that many times seamlessly blends with the original frame. The results of this research provide a glimpse of the possibility of using conditional generative adversarial networks for video outpainting

Evaluation of a short training programme for foster carers

This paper explores the current literature around foster care training in the UK in relation to a short training programme devised for foster carers from a small Scottish charity supporting looked after children in Scotland. The training package aimed to promote foster parent and child interaction and build positive and nurturing relationships through the use of art and play, within an attachment framework. The project was designed, delivered and evaluated as a work-based project and was not intended as a piece of research. Instead, it is offered as a case study to explore effective dimensions of related training, as well as inherent challenges and points of learning. Although the focus is on foster carers, it may be of interest generally to managers, academics, care workers or leavers, and those designing and delivering training packages to professionals and carers in health and social care. There were many challenges encountered in designing, project managing, delivering and evaluating the programme. The author discusses some of these differences with reference to previous work in this area, finding that the challenges encountered by others were broadly similar. Implications for future training programmes are considered

Immanuel Kant, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas on the problem of the possibility of perpetual peace

The following is a critical analysis of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas's contemporary reformulations of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace , and focuses on their respective interpretations of Kant's arguments in favour of the 'negative surrogate' of a foedus pacificum (league of peace) and against the 'positive idea' of world government. It is argued that, however problematic, Habermas's World Parliamentary Democracy, based on the constitution of a reformed United Nations, is superior to Rawls's Society of Peoples--the contemporary ideal of peace must not subordinate the interests of individual persons to the peoples to which they belong, it must be in accordance with the development of a post-Westphalian order, and it must allow for the further development of Kant's idea of a law of world citizenship. It is further argued that Habermas's proposal is the one that is most likely to result in a 'soulless despotism,' as it is not clear that the ideal of peace must necessarily seek the further nullification of state sovereignty and thereby affirm a single, unified, global system of law and litigation. Kant was correct to suggest that a lasting global peace must on the rejection in principle of the threat of use or force among states, including that of a world state

Numerical simulations of MHD flow transition in ducts with conducting Hartmann walls : Limtech Project A3 D4 (TUI) (KIT Scientific Reports ; 7713)

Pressure-driven magnetohydrodynamic duct flows in a transverse, wall-parallel and uniform field have been studied by direct numerical. The conducting Hartmann walls give rise to a laminar velocity distribution with strong jets at the side walls, which are susceptible to flow instability. The onset of time-dependent flow as well as fully developed turbulent flow have been explored in a wide range of parameters

Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting

Many of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions are associated with geological rifting where major fractures open at the Earth’s surface, yet fundamental controls on the near-surface response to the rifting process are lacking. New high resolution observations gleaned from seismometer data during the 2014 Bárðarbunga basaltic dyke intrusion in Iceland allow us unprecedented access to the associated graben formation process on both sub-second and micrometre scales. We find that what appears as quasi steady-state near-surface rifting on lower resolution GPS observation comprises discrete staccatolike deformation steps as the upper crust unzips through repetitive low magnitude (MW < 0) failures on fracture patches estimated between 300 m2 and 1200 m2 in size. Stress drops for these events are one to two orders of magnitude smaller than expected for tectonic earthquakes, demonstrating that the uppermost crust in the rift zone is exceptionally weak