1,176 research outputs found

    Variable compliance device for a respiratory physiotherapy training simulator

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    Matériaux et outils pour la santéInternational audienceSemi active devices to modify the stiffness or the damping of systems received significant attention in the recent years. In this paper, two solutions of a variable compliance device to change the physiotherapists feeling of the thorax compliance of a 6-month old infant torso training simulator are presented. A first solution, using a variable orifice device which allows to change the compliance by changing the radius of a flow pipe is proposed. Another solution is to use a magnetorheological fluid damper. Both systems are presented in detail and discussed especially for their applicability to be integrated in the simulator

    The Strategic Construction of the Legislative Agenda: Mitigating the Risks of Party Brands

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    Floor time is a scarce resource in a large legislative body like the U.S. House of Representatives. This dissertation examines the institutional mechanisms that regulate the allocation of floor time to different bills, focusing on the implications of majority party control of these mechanisms. The first chapter illustrates the tradeoffs majority party leaders face in constructing the legislative agenda, and provides an overview of the subsequent three chapters. The second chapter analyzes the use of suspension of the rules, a supermajoritarian procedure used to deal with most legislative business in the modern House. Using data on bills considered under suspension from the 93rd-113th Congresses (1973-2015), I demonstrate that the distribution of suspension bills systematically favors electorally vulnerable majority party incumbents, and largely excludes their minority party counterparts. The next chapter focuses on the more partisan and contentious portion of the legislative agenda, turning towards the bills that are typically assigned a special rule for consideration by the House Rules Committee before reaching the floor. I study an unorthodox Rules Committee practice of combining multiple bills together into one package before sending them to the floor. Using data on all House bills introduced from the 112th-114th Congresses (2011-2016), I demonstrate that partisan bills are more likely to be included in these packages. These legislative packages are more likely than non-packaged bills to be the subject of party unity passage votes on the House floor, but are no more likely to become law. The final chapter focuses on the role of the House Rules Committee as a gatekeeper in the legislative process. I consider bills that had been favorably reported by substantive committees in the House from the 104th-114th Congresses (1995-2017), and develop hypotheses about patterns of floor consideration for these bills. I find that partisan bills are less likely to be considered on the floor, but that this general pattern is conditional on characteristics of the bill sponsor and the majority party.Doctor of Philosoph

    Aspects of Spirituality in Adolescents

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    This paper analyses which aspects of spirituality are valued by adolescents, and how they are interconnected with youths' life satisfaction and 'self-centeredness'. The participants were 254 adolescents (11th grade) of four different high schools from west Germany. After re-validation of the 6-factorial student's version of the ASP questionnaire (ASP-S, Cronbach's alpha = .90), we found that they appreciated most Conscious interactions, Compassion / Generosity and Aspiring for Beauty / Wisdom, while particularly Religious orientation / Prayer (Trust in God), esoteric Transcendence conviction, or Quest orientation were of lower relevance. The importance of these aspects of spirituality is known to increase with higher age. The correlation pattern between aspects of spirituality and life satisfaction dimensions differed remarkably between female and male adolescents. In particular Conscious interactions correlated with future prospects in females, while in males it correlated much better with family life and school situation. It became obvious that the non-formal aspects of spirituality in terms of relational consciousness are still vital, particularly secular humanism (i.e. Conscious interactions, Compassion / Generosity). These findings may have implications for religious educational programmes

    Committees and Delegation in the US House of Representatives

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    Congressional committees are thought to be comprised of legislators with specific interest or expertise in the policy areas over which they are given jurisdiction. However, there exists an informational asymmetry between these legislators and the bureaucrats in the executive branch who will implement the laws they pass. If committee members care about reducing the potential for bureaucratic drift in implementation, they can allocate time and staff resources towards crafting detailed legislation that constrains the executive branch. To establish the conditions under which committee members will engage in drafting detailed legislation, I propose a new measurement of legislative delegation and conduct empirical tests on committee markups of bills from the 105th-114th congresses. My results demonstrate that committee staff size and ideological congruence among majority party leadership are important factors in the committee-level decision to draft detailed legislation in markup. Additionally, I find mixed support for the assertion that divided government incentivizes committees to constrain the executive branch through the addition of specific policy language in committee markup.Master of Art

    Haunted house in mid-to-late Victorian gothic fiction

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    This thesis addresses the central role of the haunted house in mid-to-late Victorian Gothic texts. It argues that haunting in fiction derives from distinct architectural and spatial traits that the middle-class Victorian home possessed. These design qualities both reflected and reinforced current social norms, and anxiety about the latter surfaced in Gothic texts. In this interdisciplinary study, literary analysis works alongside spatial examination, under the premise that literature is a space that can be penetrated and deciphered in the same way that buildings are texts that can be read and interpreted. This work is divided into two main sections, with the first three chapters introducing theoretical, historical and architectural notions that provide a background to the literary works to be discussed. The first chapter presents various theorists’ notions behind haunting and the convergence of spectrality and space, giving rise to the discussion of domestic haunting and its appeal. The second chapter examines the Crystal Palace as the icon of public space in Victorian times, its capacity for haunting, as well as its ability to frame the domestic both socially and historically. The third chapter focuses on the prototype of private space at the time—the middle-class home—in order to highlight the specificity of this dwelling, both as an architectural and symbolic entity. The second section also consists of three chapters, dedicated to the “dissection” of the haunted house, divided into three different areas: liminal, secret, and surrounding space. The fourth chapter examines works where marginal space, in the shape of hallways and staircases, is the site of intense haunting. A novel by Richard Marsh and stories by Bulwer-Lytton, Algernon Blackwood and W.W. Jacobs are analyzed here. The fifth chapter is a journey through rooms and secretive space of the spectral home; works by authors such as Wilkie Collins, J.H. Riddell and Sheridan Le Fanu are considered in order to argue that the home’s exceptional compartmentalization and its concern for secrecy translated effortlessly into Gothic fiction. The final chapter addresses an integral yet external part of the Victorian home—the grounds. Gardens in works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Margaret Oliphant, M.R. James, and Oscar Wilde are inspected, proving Gothic fiction’s disregard for boundaries and its ability to exceed the parameters of the home

    A finite volume method for the Navier-Stokes equations with finite rate chemistry

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    Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1985.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND SCIENCE.Bibliography: leaves 376-380.by Thomas Richard Arthur Bussing.Sc.D

    Willingness to Use ADHD Treatments: A Mixed Methods Study of Perceptions by Adolescents, Parents, Health Professionals and Teachers

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    Little is known about factors that influence willingness to engage in treatment for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). From 2007 to 2008, in the context of a longitudinal study assessing ADHD detection and service use in the United States, we simultaneously elicited ADHD treatment perceptions from four stakeholder groups: adolescents, parents, health care professionals and teachers. We assessed their willingness to use ADHD interventions and views of potential undesirable effects of two pharmacological (short- and long-acting ADHD medications) and three psychosocial (ADHD education, behavior therapy, and counseling) treatments. In multiple regression analysis, willingness was found to be significantly related to respondent type (lower for adolescents than adults), feeling knowledgeable, and considering treatments acceptable and helpful, but not significantly associated with stigma/embarrassment, respondent race, gender and socioeconomic status. Because conceptual models of undesirable effects are underdeveloped, we used grounded theory method to analyze open-ended survey responses to the question: What other undesirable effects are you concerned about? We identified general negative treatment perceptions (dislike, burden, perceived ineffectiveness) and specific undesirable effect expectations (physiological and psychological side effects, stigma and future dependence on drugs or therapies) for pharmacological and psychosocial treatments. In summary, findings indicate significant discrepancies between teens\u27 and adults\u27 willingness to use common ADHD interventions, with low teen willingness for any treatments. Results highlight the need to develop better treatment engagement practices for adolescents with ADHD. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
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