Environmental Deterioration in Contemporary Appalachian Literature: A Biblical Ecocritical Analysis of Serena and Strange as This Weather Has Been

Ron Rash’s Serena and Ann Pancake’s Strange as This Weather Has Been are two contemporary Appalachian novels that have yet to be analyzed from a biblical ecocritical perspective. While some literary scholars acknowledge the environmental aspects of the novels, little of their research goes beyond examining the land and its resources as commodities or metaphorical extensions for the characters. In this thesis, I elaborate on those interpretations by scrutinizing the natural descriptions in both novels and comparing those findings to some of the landscapes and environmental verses located within the Bible. Unlike the pastoral ideal found in a portion of the literature preceding the twentieth century, contemporary Appalachian writers such as Rash and Pancake have moved away from such a bucolic, prelapsarian idealization in favor of limning a more industrialized, postlapsarian Appalachia. Following both analyses, I conclude by predicting how emerging Appalachian writers will portray the landscape in future works

Big Data, Both Friend And Foe: The Intersection Of Privacy And Trade On The Transatlantic Stage

This Note analyzes the data privacy protection initiatives implemented by the European Union and the United States and their effects on international trade. As technology develops, the feasibility of data collection increases, allowing for the collecting of inconceivable amounts of data information. Consequently, this data includes personal information, thus implicating privacy concerns and the need for data privacy protection regulations. Data privacy focuses on the use and governance of personal data and how the data is gathered, collected, and stored. In 2018, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which sets out highly stringent standards for how organizations conducting business with European Union citizens may handle their data. While the United States lacks an all-encompassing data-protection law similar to the GDPR, the likelihood of federal implementation of such regulation is growing. Due to the tech industry’s exponential growth, data privacy regulations have had trouble keeping pace. Nevertheless, data privacy protection is more necessary than ever. The discrepancies in data privacy regulations gravely affect international business relationships governed by the different regulations. This Note discusses the affects, benefits, and possible solutions to these issues

Question-posing & question-responding at the heart of possibility thinking in the early years.

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleDrawing on research that sought to explore the characteristics of ‘Possibility Thinking’ as central to creativity in young children’s learning, this paper considers question-posing and question-responding as the driving features of ‘Possibility Thinking’ (PT). This qualitative study employed micro-event analysis of peer and pupil–teacher interaction. Events were sampled from two early years settings in England, one a Reception classroom (4- to 5-year olds) and the other a Year 2 classroom (6- to 7-year olds). This article arises out of the second stage of an ongoing research programme (2004–2007) involving the children and practitioners in these settings. This phase considers the dimensions of question-posing and the categories of question-responding and their interrelationship within PT. Three dimensions of questioning were identified as characteristic of PT. These included: (i) question framing, reflecting the purpose inherent within questions for adults and children (including leading, service and follow-through questions); (ii) question degree: manifestation of the degree of possibility inherent in children’s questions (including possibility narrow, possibility moderate, possibility broad); (iii) question modality, manifestation of the modality inherent in children’s questions (including verbal and non-verbal forms). The fine-grained data analysis offers insight into how children engage in PT to meet specific needs in responding to creative tasks and activities and reveals the crucial role that question-posing and question-responding play in creative learning. It also provides more detail about the nature of young children’s thinking, made visible through question-posing and responding in engaging playful contexts

Reactivity Control Schemes for Fast Spectrum Space Nuclear Reactors

Several different reactivity control schemes are considered for future space nuclear reactor power systems. Each of these control schemes uses a combination of boron carbide absorbers and/or beryllium oxide reflectors to achieve sufficient reactivity swing to keep the reactor subcritical during launch and to provide sufficient excess reactivity to operate the reactor over its expected 7-15 year lifetime. The size and shape of the control system directly impacts the size and mass of the space reactor\u27s reflector and shadow shield, leading to a tradeoff between reactivity swing and total system mass. This paper presents a trade study of drum, shutter, and petal control schemes based on reactivity swing and mass effects for a representative fast-spectrum, gas-cooled reactor. For each control scheme, the dimensions and composition of the core are constant, and the reflector is sized to provide $5 of cold-clean excess reactivity with each configuration in its most reactive state. The advantages and disadvantages of each configuration are discussed, along with optimization techniques and novel geometric approaches for each scheme

The Larva, Pupa and Female of Agapetus jocassee Morse (Trichoptera: Glossosomatidae)

Agapetus jocassee is a Species of Concern on the lists of the U.S.D.I. Fish and Wildlife Service because it is known from only three streams of the Lake Jocassee catchment in Oconee and Transylvania counties, South and North Carolina. To assist in solving identification problems and to contribute to knowledge of the distribution of this species, larvae and pupae of A. jocassee were collected from mountain streams in North and South Carolina, reared to adulthood and identified. The larva, pupa, and female of the species are described for the first time. Characters were found in those ontogenetic stages that distinguish this species from other Agapetus species whose immature stages and females are known. The species was collected from two streams other than the type localities, suggesting that it may be more widely distributed in streams of the Blue Ridge Escarpment than previously thought

Optimal partial-arcs in VMAT treatment planning

Purpose: To improve the delivery efficiency of VMAT by extending the recently published VMAT treatment planning algorithm vmerge to automatically generate optimal partial-arc plans. Methods and materials: A high-quality initial plan is created by solving a convex multicriteria optimization problem using 180 equi-spaced beams. This initial plan is used to form a set of dose constraints, and a set of partial-arc plans is created by searching the space of all possible partial-arc plans that satisfy these constraints. For each partial-arc, an iterative fluence map merging and sequencing algorithm (vmerge) is used to improve the delivery efficiency. Merging continues as long as the dose quality is maintained above a user-defined threshold. The final plan is selected as the partial arc with the lowest treatment time. The complete algorithm is called pmerge. Results: Partial-arc plans are created using pmerge for a lung, liver and prostate case, with final treatment times of 127, 245 and 147 seconds. Treatment times using full arcs with vmerge are 211, 357 and 178 seconds. Dose quality is maintained across the initial, vmerge, and pmerge plans to within 5% of the mean doses to the critical organs-at-risk and with target coverage above 98%. Additionally, we find that the angular distribution of fluence in the initial plans is predictive of the start and end angles of the optimal partial-arc. Conclusions: The pmerge algorithm is an extension to vmerge that automatically finds the partial-arc plan that minimizes the treatment time. VMAT delivery efficiency can be improved by employing partial-arcs without compromising dose quality. Partial arcs are most applicable to cases with non-centralized targets, where the time savings is greatest