Scenic Design for an Original Script: Dinner With The Louminauts

This thesis examines the process for the scene design for the production of Dinner with the Louminauts by Jason Cutler. The University of New Orleans produced the show in the Fall of 2006. My graduate committee chose this project for me as partial fulfillment of my Masters of Fine Arts degree. This paper will serve as a record of the process, execution, and response of the scene design for this production. The text will be accompanied by all of my research, renderings, draftings, and other supporting materials that are applicable to the design process

Scenic Design for an Original Script: Dinner With The Louminauts

This thesis examines the process for the scene design for the production of Dinner with the Louminauts by Jason Cutler. The University of New Orleans produced the show in the Fall of 2006. My graduate committee chose this project for me as partial fulfillment of my Masters of Fine Arts degree. This paper will serve as a record of the process, execution, and response of the scene design for this production. The text will be accompanied by all of my research, renderings, draftings, and other supporting materials that are applicable to the design process

Analyzing Sensor-Based Individual and Population Behavior Patterns via Inverse Reinforcement Learning

Digital markers of behavior can be continuously created, in everyday settings, using time series data collected by ambient sensors. The goal of this work was to perform individual- and population-level behavior analysis from such time series sensor data. In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm-Resident Relative Entropy-Inverse Reinforcement Learning (RRE-IRL)-to perform an analysis of a single smart home resident or a group of residents, using inverse reinforcement learning. By employing this method, we learnt an individual\u27s behavioral routine preferences. We then analyzed daily routines for an individual and for eight smart home residents grouped by health diagnoses. We observed that the behavioral routine preferences changed over time. Specifically, the probability that the observed behavior was the same at the beginning of data collection as it was at the end (months later) was lower for residents experiencing cognitive decline than for cognitively healthy residents. When comparing aggregated behavior between groups of residents from the two diagnosis groups, the behavioral difference was even greater. Furthermore, the behavior preferences were used by a random forest classifier to predict a resident\u27s cognitive health diagnosis, with an accuracy of 0.84

How to Create High Impact Community Outreach Through a Veteran Entrepreneurship Training Program

The purpose of this article is to share the lessons learned from creating an entrepreneurial training program for area veterans. The article will provide a blueprint that will allow readers to create a similar program at their campuses. Discussion will include the benefits for an entrepreneurship program by creating this type of outreach activity, why this type of program can have a high community impact for the university, how it has helped veteran participants, what are the key issues, and how to avoid pitfalls in the process

Gradient-Based Habitat Affinities Predict Species Vulnerability to Drought

Ecological fingerprints of climate change are becoming increasingly evident at broad geographical scales as measured by species range shifts and changes in phenology. However, finer-scale species-level responses to environmental fluctuations may also provide an important bellwether of impending future community responses. Here we examined changes in abundance of butterfly species along a hydrological gradient of six montane meadow habitat types in response to drought. Our data collection began prior to the drought, and we were able to track changes for 11 years, of which eight were considered mild to extreme drought conditions. We separated the species into those that had an affinity for hydric vs. xeric habitats. We suspected that drought would favor species with xeric habitat affinities, but that there could be variations in species-level responses along the hydrological gradient. We also suspected that mesic meadows would be most sensitive to drought conditions. Temporal trajectories were modeled for both species groups (hydric vs. xeric affinity) and individual species. Abundances of species with affinity for xeric habitats increased in virtually all meadow types. Conversely, abundances of species with affinity for hydric habitats decreased, particularly in mesic and xeric meadows. Mesic meadows showed the most striking temporal abundance trajectory: Increasing abundances of species with xeric habitat affinity were offset by decreasing or stable abundances of species with hydric habitat affinity. The one counterintuitive finding was that, in some hydric meadows, species with affinity for hydric habitats increased. In these cases, we suspect that decreasing moisture conditions in hydric meadows actually increased habitat suitability because sites near the limit of moisture extremes for some species became more acceptable. Thus, species responses were relatively predictable based upon habitat affinity and habitat location along the hydrological gradient, and mesic meadows showed the highest potential for changes in community composition. The implications of these results are that longer-term changes due to drought could simplify community composition, resulting in prevalence of species tolerant to drying conditions and a loss of species associated with wetter conditions. We contend that this application of gradient analysis could be valuable in assessing species vulnerability of other taxa and ecosystems

Some studies on β-amylase from barley malt

1. β-Amylase was prepared from barley malt by salt extraction and purified by ammonium sulphate fractionation and gel filtration on Sephadex G-25 followed by chromatography on DEAE-cellulose. Traces of β-amylase activity were removed by low temperature storage under acid conditions. β-Amylase so prepared released no soluble blue dye from chromogenic alpha-1,4-glucans. 2. The kinetic parameters (Km and Vm) of β-amylase hydrolysing alpha-1,4-glucan polymers were found to increase in the presence of β-amylase. This was explained in relation to the chain length of the substrate. 3. Amyloses of different degree of polymerization (DP) were prepared by ethanol fractionation of thymol-precipitated amylose from soluble starch. The values of Km and Vm for β-amylase were shown to decrease with an increase in the DP of the substrate. The values of Km for the non-reducing terminal and of for the internal portions of the substrate were found to be 0.001mM and 0,00015mM, respectively. 4. Series of dialdehyde amyloses and borohydride-reduced dialdehyde amyloses were prepared. An explanation was given for the dependence of Km and Vm upon the degree of oxidation of dialdehyde and reduced dialdehyde substrates. 5. Inhibition studies involving maltose, dialdehyde and reduced dialdehyde amyloses were carried out. A theory to explain the inhibitory effect of oxidized amyloses upon β-amylase activity was put forward. 6. Immobilised β-amylase derivatives prepared using AE-cellulose and polyaminostyrene supports were found to retain 18% and 9.1%, respectively, of the original activity of the soluble enzyme. The effects of pH and temperature upon the immobilised derivatives was compared with the effects upon soluble β-amylase and the apparent value s of Km and Vm (Km' and Vm') for soluble starch and of Ki (Ki') maltose were determined for each preparation. The action patterns of the soluble enzyme and the immobilised derivatives on amylose were investigated by plotting the decrease in blue value of the amylose substrate against the increase in the reducing power of the solution as hydrolysis proceeded and were confirmed by chromatographic analysis of the reaction products and intermediates of maltoheptaose hydrolysis and explained in terms of the alteration of enzyme affinity towards the substrate upon immobilisation

41 - Data Exploration and Analysis for the Hemingway Measure of Adult Connectedness

Abstract: We analyze the dataset collected from students participating in the Boy With A Ball (BWAB) program, a faith-based community outreach group, through the Hemingway Measure of Adult Connectedness©, a questionnaire measuring the social connectedness of adolescents. First, we approach the data in the conventional method provided by the Hemingway website. We then identify which questions are strong determiners in deciding whether a student has completed the BWAB program or not. With the goal of utilizing the logistic regression, we reduce the set of questions to those only identified as significant in other methods. These methods include linear regression, decision tree, and random forest. The results are explained from a psychological perspective of social adolescent development. Keywords: connectedness, adolescent, development, Hemingway, linear, logistic, psychological Gildardo Bautista-Maya: [email protected] Dr. Ping Ye: [email protected] Dr. Diane Cook: [email protected]

EANN 2023 conference summary: looking to the future and celebrating advancement in neuroscience nursing

Members of the British Association of Neuroscience Nurses provide a roundup and overview of the European Association of Neuroscience Nurses congress, which was held in Reykjavik, Iceland in May 2023

Parallel Knowledge Discovery from Large Complex Databases

NASA is focusing on grand challenge problems in Earth and space sciences. Within these areas of science, new instrumentation will be providing scientists with unprecedented amounts of unprocessed data. Our goal is to design and implement a system that takes raw data as input and efficiently discovers interesting concepts that can target areas for further investigation and can be used to compress the data. Our approach will provide an intelligent parallel data analysis system