Wireless Sensor Network Wildfire Detection System

One of the current difficulties in battling the destructive and costly wildfires is in obtaining up to date, accurate information of the fire\u27s current location and intensity. Current methods relying primarily on satellite technology are too slow and inaccurate, therefore a better method is needed to help lower the destruction caused by wildfires and reduce the resources needed to battle t hem. This research proposes distributing a large number of cheap sensors across an area encompassed by wildfire capable of organizing themselves into an ad-hoc wireless sensor network to monitor the fire\u27s current intensity and location. The majority of work performed pertaining to this research is in developing and analyzing the simulation tools needed to accurately test the wireless sensor network wildfire detection system. Commercially available software was used to generate realistic fires to test the system with, while custom software was developed to test how accurately randomly distributed sensors can predict a fire\u27s outer perimeter intensity and location. The simulation results show this proposed method to be a promising solution to the current lack of information available for fighting wildfires. The predicted fireline is generated using a combination of algorithms to extract the most important information from the sensor nodes and generate a best guess for the fire\u27s location. The best guess is compared against the ideal, previously known fireline, and found to be consistently accurate provided enough sensor nodes are distributed throughout the region. Further analysis still needs to be performed to determine the ideal number of sensor nodes required for any geographic area while maintaining accurate fire and outer fireline location. Even with the needed future analysis, the current results provide a strong base by which an argument can be made for the effectiveness and feasibility of such a system

Novel Properties: Communication, Copyright, and the British Novel, 1710-1774

Literary investigations of copyright have generally taken a retrospective view of British eighteenth-century copyright law. Influenced by the assumptions and methods of historical materialism, and aiming to critique romantic notions of authorship, such projects have sought in the eighteenth century a narrative of the \u27rise of the romantic author.\u27 Though productive, this approach has sometimes obscured other influential strains of thought about authorship, interpretation, and literary property that were widespread in the eighteenth century. This dissertation seeks to shift focus away from the historical materialist critique of romantic authorship--part of a debate that has its roots in the nineteenth century--and towards a related but characteristically eighteenth-century debate between innatism and empiricism. Roughly speaking, this debate was over whether \u27ideas\u27 (however defined) are innate, present in the human mind from birth, or are acquired exclusively through experience. Discussions of literary property in the eighteenth century concerned themselves with this debate precisely in so far as literature may be said to involve the production, transmission, or consumption of ideas. To reexamine the rise of copyright law in Britain within the frame of this debate, this dissertation examines court records and other legal documents that discussed copyright law and the related notion of a property in ideas; philosophical tracts that attempted to define the term \u27idea\u27 and explain the origin of ideas; and literary works that problematized the production, transmission, consumption, and interpretation of literary ideas. Read alongside one another, these texts reveal a proliferation of models through which to understand the novel concept of literary property. To explore the question of whether the ideas in a text could be communicated without being made common, these texts drew on a wide range of metaphors--political sovereignty, land ownership, marriage, mathematical proof, and sentimental exchange--to serve as models of communication. Each of these models had different implications for the concept of literary property, and many of them were compatible with literary property, while remaining incompatible with romantic notions of authorship. The association between copyright and romantic authorship, then, is not necessary but contingent, subject to transformation by the accidents of history

Business ethics in the intercultural and global context: a conceptual framework

"Der Artikel schlägt vor, den Ansatz zur Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik mit Entschiedenheit in den globalen Kontext zu stellen und von den bereits vorhandenen verschiedenen Ansätzen in Nordamerika, Europa und anderen Kontinenten zu lernen. Ein Rahmenkonzept wird entwickelt, das begrifflichen Raum für vielfältige Typen von Akteuren und internationalen Beziehungen verschafft und die Beziehung zwischen Ethik und Ökonomie als eine Bewegung 'auf zwei Beinen' kennzeichnet. Darauf folgt eine kurze empirische Übersicht über das sich weltweit entwickelnde Gebiet der Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik und eine Diskussion verschiedener theoretischer Ansätze." (Autorenreferat)"The article aims at definitely placing the approach to business and economic ethics into the global context. By learning from different approaches in various countries, it develops a conceptual framework which provides room for multiple types of actors and various kinds of international relations and characterizes the relationship between ethics and business/economics as a 'two-leg approach'. Then a brief descriptive overview of the emerging field of business ethics around the world is presented and different theoretical approaches are discussed." (author's abstract