The relationship between time devoted to independent recreational reading and reading achievement scores

The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary assessment, in the Western Australian context, of the relationship between reading achievement scores and time devoted to independent recreational reading, and the extent to which gender and socio-economic status, affect this relationship. The data pertaining to time spent in independent recreational reading were collected by means of a questionnaire. The subjects and their teachers were trained by the researcher in the procedure to be followed in the questionnaire completion. The data relating to reading achievement scores were generated through the administration of the comprehension sub-test of the Progressive Achievement Test (1973). The sample consisted of 65 Year Seven students chosen from three Perth metropolitan primary schools. The three schools were selected so that each socio-economic status level - high, middle and low was represented. Measures of socio-economic status were those derived from Ross, Farish and Plunkett (1988) criteria as used by the Western Australian Ministry of Education in identifying schools in the disadvantaged localities ( 1988). Pearson\u27s product moment correlation coefficient was used to assess the significance of the relationship between reading achievement scores and time devoted to independent recreational reading. Simple analyses of variance were used to determine the significance of the differences between the means of the independent recreational reading scores for boys and girls as well as for low, middle and high socio-economic status groups. Likewise, the same procedure was used to determine the significance of the differences between the means of the reading achievement scores for boys and girls and for low, middle and high socio-economic groups. Arguments based on the hypothetical syllogism were used to infer the influence of gender and socio-economic status on the relationship between reading achievement scores and time devoted to independent recreational reading. Reading achievement scores were found to be significantly and positively related to time devoted to independent recreational reading. Girls were found to have significantly higher reading achievement scores and to devote significantly more time to independent recreational reading than boys. Subjects in the high socio-economic status group were found to have significantly higher reading achievement scores and to devote significantly more time to independent recreational reading than the middle socio-economic status group. Similarly, subjects in the middle socio-economic status group were found to have significantly higher reading achievement scores and to devote significantly more time to independent recreational reading than the low socio-economic group. It was interred that there are important gender and socio-economic status effects in the positive relationship between reading achievement scores and time devoted to independent recreational reading. On the basis of this study, it was concluded that a much more extensive study, into the relationship between reading achievement scores and time devoted to independent recreational reading, using more sophisticated sampling and statistical techniques, is warranted in the Western Australian context

Potential for EMU Fabric Damage by Electron Beam and Molten Metal During Space Welding for the International Space Welding Experiment

As a consequence of preparations concerning the International Space Welding Experiment (ISWE), studies were performed to better understand the effect of molten metal contact and electron beam impingement with various fabrics for space suit applications. The question arose as to what would occur if the electron beam from the Ukrainian Universal Hand Tool (UHT) designed for welding in space were to impinge upon a piece of Nextel AF-62 ceramic cloth designed to withstand temperatures up to 1427 C. The expectation was that the electron beam would lay down a static charge pattern with no damage to the ceramic fabric. The electron beam is capable of spraying the fabric with enough negative charge to repel further electrons from the fabric before significant heating occurs. The static charge pattern would deflect any further charge accumulation except for a small initial amount of leakage to the grounded surface of the welder. However, when studies were made of the effect of the electron beam on the insulating ceramic fabric it was surprisingly found that the electron beam did indeed burn through the ceramic fabric. It was also found that the shorter electron beam standoff distances had longer burnthrough times than did some greater electron beam standoff distances. A possible explanation for the longer burnthrough times for the small electron beam standoff distance would be outgassing of the fabric which caused the electron beam hand-tool to cycle on and off to provide some protection for the cathodes. The electron beam hand tool was observed to cycle off at the short standoff distance of two inches likely due to vapors being outgassed. During the electron beam welding process there is an electron leakage, or current leakage, flow from the fabric. A static charge pattern is initially laid down by the electron beam current flow. The static charge makes up the current leakage flow which initially slightly heats up the fabric. The initially laid down surface charge leaks a small amount of current. The rate at which the current charge leaks from the fabric controls how fast the fabric heats up. As the ceramic fabric is heated it begins to outgass primarily from contamination/impurities atoms or molecules on and below the fabric surface. The contaminant gases ionize to create extra charge carriers and multiply a current of electrons. The emitted gas which ionized in the electron leakage flow promotes further leakage. Thus, the small leakage of charge from the fabric surface is enhanced by outgassing. When the electron beam current makes up the lost current, the incoming electrons heat the fabric and further enhance the outgassing. The additional leakage promotes additional heating up of the ceramic fabric. The electrons bound to the ceramic fabric surface leak off more and more as the surface gets hotter promoting even greater leakage. The additional electrons that result also gain energy in the field and produce further electrons. Eventually the process becomes unstable and accelerates to the point where a hole is burned through the fabric

An Assessment of Molten Metal Detachment Hazards During Electron Beam Welding in the Space Shuttle Bay at LEO for the International Space Welding Experiment

In 1997, the United States [NASA] and the Paton Electric Welding Institute are scheduled to cooperate in a flight demonstration on the U.S. Space Shuttle to demonstrate the feasibility of welding in space for a possible repair option for the International Space Station Alpha. This endeavor, known as the International Space Welding Experiment (ISWE), will involve astronauts performing various welding exercises such as brazing, cutting, welding, and coating using an electron beam space welding system that was developed by the E.O. Paton Electric Welding Institute (PWI), Kiev Ukraine. This electron beam welding system known as the "Universal Weld System" consists of hand tools capable of brazing, cutting, autogeneous welding, and coating using an 8 kV (8000 volts) electron beam. The electron beam hand tools have also been developed by the Paton Welding Institute with greater capabilities than the original hand tool, including filler wire feeding, to be used with the Universal Weld System on the U.S. Space Shuttle Bay as part of ISWE. The hand tool(s) known as the Ukrainian Universal Hand [Electron Beam Welding] Tool (UHT) will be utilized for the ISWE Space Shuttle flight welding exercises to perform welding on various metal alloy samples. A total of 61 metal alloy samples, which include 304 stainless steel, Ti-6AI-4V, 2219 aluminum, and 5456 aluminum alloys, have been provided by NASA for the ISWE electron beam welding exercises using the UHT. These samples were chosen to replicate both the U.S. and Russian module materials. The ISWE requires extravehicular activity (EVA) of two astronauts to perform the space shuttle electron beam welding operations of the 61 alloy samples. This study was undertaken to determine if a hazard could exist with ISWE during the electron beam welding exercises in the Space Shuttle Bay using the Ukrainian Universal Weld System with the UHT. The safety issue has been raised with regard to molten metal detachments as a result of several possible causes such as welder procedural error, externally applied impulsive forces(s), filler wire entrainment and snap-out, cutting expulsion, and puddle expulsion. Molten metal detachment from either the weld/cut substrate or weld wire could present harm to a astronaut in the space environment it the detachment was ti burn through the fabric of the astronaut Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMC). In this paper an experimental test was performed in a 4 ft. x 4 ft. vacuum chamber at MSFC enabling protective garment to be exposed to the molten metal drop detachments to over 12 inches. The chamber was evacuated to vacuum levels of at least 1 x 10(exp -5) torr (50 micro-torr) during operation of the 1.0 kW Universal Hand Tool (UHT). The UHT was manually operated at the power mode appropriate for each material and thickness. The space suit protective welding garment, made of Teflon fabric (10 oz. per yard) with a plain weave, was placed on the floor of the vacuum chamber to catch the molten metal drop detachments. A pendulum release mechanism consisting of four hammers, each weighing approximately 3.65 lbs, was used to apply an impact forces to the weld sample/plate during both the electron beam welding and cutting exercises. Measurements were made of the horizontal fling distances of the detached molten metal drops. The volume of a molten metal drop can also be estimated from the size of the cut. Utilizing equations, calculations were made to determine chande in surafec area (Delat a(surface)) for 304 stainless steel for cutting based on measurements of metal drop sizes at the cut edges. For the cut sample of 304 stainless steel based on measurement of the drop size at the edge, Delta-a(surface) was determined to be 0.0054 2 in . Calculations have indicated only a small amount of energy is required to detach a liquid metal drop. For example, approximately only 0.000005 ft-lb of energy is necessary to detach a liquid metal steel drop based on the above theoretical analysis. However, some of the energy will be absorbed by the plate before it reaches the metal drop. Based on the theoretical calculations, it was determined that during a weld cutting exercise, the titanium alloy would be the most difficult to detach molten metal droplets followed by stainless steel and then by aluminum. The results of the experimental effort have shown that molten metal will detach if large enough of a hammer blow is applied to the weld sample plate during the full penetration welding and cutting exercises. However, no molten metal detachments occurred as a result of the filler wire snap-out tests from the weld puddle since it was too difficult to cause the metal to flick-out from the pool. Molten metal detachments, though not large in size, did result from the direct application of the electron beam on the end of the filler weld wire

ConTra: (Con)text (Tra)nsformer for Cross-Modal Video Retrieval

In this paper, we re-examine the task of cross-modal clip-sentence retrieval, where the clip is part of a longer untrimmed video. When the clip is short or visually ambiguous, knowledge of its local temporal context (i.e. surrounding video segments) can be used to improve the retrieval performance. We propose Context Transformer (ConTra); an encoder architecture that models the interaction between a video clip and its local temporal context in order to enhance its embedded representations. Importantly, we supervise the context transformer using contrastive losses in the cross-modal embedding space. We explore context transformers for video and text modalities. Results consistently demonstrate improved performance on three datasets: YouCook2, EPIC-KITCHENS and a clip-sentence version of ActivityNet Captions. Exhaustive ablation studies and context analysis show the efficacy of the proposed method.Comment: Accepted in ACCV 202

Tracking the Trends of the Self-Represented Litigant Phenomenon: Data from the National Self-Represented Litigants Project, 2018/2019

From 2011-2013, Dr. Julie Macfarlane studied experiences of self-representation in Canada in three provinces: Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta. She conducted detailed personal interviews and/or focus group interviews with 259 self-represented litigants (SRLs). After the publication of Dr. Macfarlane’s initial report in 2013, SRLs continued to contact the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP). This led the research team to develop an “Intake Form” using SurveyMonkey, in order to continue to collect information from SRLs across Canada. While the data collected from the replies to the Intake Form is less detailed than the original study interviews, the questionnaire tracks SRL demographics using some of the same variables, such as income, education level, and party status. It also asks questions about the SRL’s experience with prior legal services, mediation services, and bringing a support person to court. The Intake Form also provides a window into SRL personal experiences through a final “open format” question. The NSRLP is committed to continued reporting on the data we collect in this way from SRLs. This new Intake Report presents data from 173 respondents, collected between January 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019

Power Systems Operation Planning Optimization

Optimal hydrothermal power dispatch on a multi-area network is a large-scale non-linear problem. Its objective is to find the optimal generation schedule of hydro and thermal units in a multi-area system, over a given time period, while satisfying system constraints. Since the cost of power production is very high, its effective solution would be very helpful in saving a significant amount of money for power companies. The methods currently used in the literature may be divided into deterministic methods and heuristic ones. Both of them have some limitations: deterministic methods can converge on local minima; heuristic methods are usually slow in converging. This dissertation presents an innovative method based on the direct solution of the multi-area hydrothermal power dispatch problem in the case of one hydro unit. The methodology is extended to the general case of several hydro units by an iterative procedure based on cascade applications of the direct solution. The method is suitable for radial interconnections of every size and complexity and it is a valid support for the power systems operation planning. A comparison with some numerical examples taken from the literature and an application to a real case (the Italian electricity network for the year 2011) have been provided

A New Species of Mimosa L. ser. Bipinnatae DC. (Leguminosae) from the Cerrado: Taxonomic and Phylogenetic Insights

Mimosa carolina (Leguminosae), a new species from the Parque Nacional Chapada das Mesas, located in the northern limit of the Brazilian Cerrado, is described and illustrated. In addition, a phylogenetic reconstruction was performed to recover the position of this species in relation to the main clades of the genus Mimosa. This new species is assigned to sect. Habbasia ser. Bipinnatae and exhibits relevant morphological differences with all described species of this series, most notably the prostate habit, glabrous stems, and absence of internal spicules. Our results indicate that this new entity is clearly nested in a strongly supported clade with other striated-corolla species of ser. Bipinnatae. Therefore, ser. Bipinnatae appears to be monophyletic, and a morphologically and ecologically cohesive group within Mimosa. An updated identification key for this series is provided.Fil: Morales, Matias. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Morón. Facultad de Agronomía y Ciencias Agroalimentarias; ArgentinaFil: Fortunato, Renee Hersilia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Morón. Facultad de Agronomía y Ciencias Agroalimentarias; ArgentinaFil: Fragomeni Simon, Marcelo Embrapa Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia. Parque Estação Biológica; Brasi

The Maximal Pore Size of Hydrophobic Microporous Membranes Does Not Fully Characterize the Resistance to Plasma Breakthrough of Membrane Devices for Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation

open4Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in blood-outside devices equipped with hydrophobic membranes has become routine treatment of respiratory or cardiac failure. In spite of membrane hydrophobicity, significant amounts of plasma water may form in the gas compartment during treatment, an event termed plasma water breakthrough. When this occurs, plasma water occludes some gas pathways and ultimately cripples the oxygenator gas exchange capacity requiring its substitution. This causes patient hemodilution and increases the activation of the patient's immune system. On these grounds, the resistance to plasma water breakthrough is regarded as an important feature of ECMO devices. Many possible events may explain the occurrence of plasma breakthrough. In spite of this, the resistance to plasma breakthrough of ECMO devices is commercially characterized only with respect to the membrane maximal pore size, evaluated by the bubble pressure method or by SEM analysis of membrane surfaces. The discrepancy between the complexity of the events causing plasma breakthrough in ECMO devices (hence determining their resistance to plasma breakthrough), and that claimed commercially has caused legal suits on the occasion of the purchase of large stocks of ECMO devices by large hospitals or regional institutions. The main aim of this study was to identify some factors that contribute to determining the resistance to plasma breakthrough of ECMO devices, as a means to minimize litigations triggered by an improper definition of the requirements of a clinically efficient ECMO device. The results obtained show that: membrane resistance to breakthrough should be related to the size of the pores inside the membrane wall rather than at its surface; membranes with similar nominal maximal pore size may exhibit pores with significantly different size distribution; membrane pore size distribution rather than the maximal pore size determines membrane resistance to breakthrough; the presence of surfactants in the patient's blood (e.g., lipids, alcohol, etc.) may significantly modify the intrinsic membrane resistance to breakthrough, more so the higher the surfactant concentration. We conclude that the requirements of ECMO devices in terms of resistance to plasma breakthrough ought to account for all these factors and not rely only on membrane maximal pore size.openFragomeni Gionata, Terzini Mara, Comite Antonio, Catapano GerardoFragomeni, Gionata; Terzini, Mara; Comite, Antonio; Catapano, Gerard

Uma proposta de modelo conceitual para representação da música popular brasileira

O termo “música popular brasileira” refere-se a um repertório variado de estilos musicais que possui forte conexão com a cultura local e legitima-se como expressão que ganha caráter de tradição e promove registros subjetivos da organização social vigente. Ademais, é o estilo preferido pelos brasileiros, o que acaba motivando a proliferação de fontes de informação sobre essa música, que variam de sites independentes até centros de documentação. Por outro lado, as mudanças culturais trazidas pelo amplo acesso à Internet promovem uma reflexão sobre modelos, práticas e padrões adotados tradicionalmente, fazendo com que os centros de documentação passem a considerar a possibilidade de estarem integrados ao contexto da Web Semântica a fim de evitar que se mantenham como silos informacionais. Nessa dissertação é proposto um modelo conceitual que formaliza as características da música popular brasileira em um sentido amplo, considerando-se aspectos do contexto cultural em que se insere, de sua natureza, e de sua concepção, execução e gravação, para apoiar: (i) a comunicação e análise do domínio da música brasileira; (ii) a publicação e o intercâmbio de dados musicais bibliográficos e não bibliográficos na Web Semântica; e (iii) a construção de sistemas que melhor atendam às necessidades informacionais dos usuários desse tipo de música. Do ponto de vista metodológico, os elementos do modelo foram obtidos com base na literatura e em pesquisas anteriores. Os resultados permitiram evidenciar as nuances da música brasileira por meio da identificação dos conceitos e relacionamentos mais relevantes a esse estilo musical formalizados em um artefato descrito em linguagem ontológica. Além desse resultado, foi feito um experimento de extensão do IFLA LRM, a partir do modelo conceitual, para a descrição de músicas brasileiras, demonstrando a sua utilidade como insumo para a adequação de padrões bibliográficos ao domínio da música popular brasileira.The term “Brazilian popular music” refers to a varied repertoire of musical styles with strong connection with local culture, that legitimizes itself as tradition and creates records of current social organization. Moreover, it is the preferred musical style of Brazilians, what motivates the proliferation of information sources about this music, ranging from independent sites to documentation centers. On the other hand, cultural changes, caused by the wide access to the Internet, demand a revision of traditionally adopted models, practices and standards, making those documentation centers consider the possibility of integrating to the Semantic Web in order to prevent them from keeping themselves as information silos. In this dissertation, it is proposed a conceptual model that formalizes the characteristics of Brazilian popular music in a broader sense, considering aspects of the cultural context in which it is inserted, of its nature, and its conception, execution and recording, in order to support: (i) communication and analysis of Brazilian music domain; (ii) publication and interchange of bibliographical and non-bibliographical musical data in the Semantic Web; and (iii) development of systems that best meet informational needs of users of this kind of music. From a methodological point of view, the modeled elements were obtained based on the literature and previous researches. The results allowed to highlight nuances of Brazilian music, through the identification of the most relevant concepts and relationships to this musical style, formalized on an artifact described in ontological language. It was also made an experiment, based on the conceptual model, that extends the IFLA LRM for Brazilian music description. In this experiment, the proposed model showed its value as input for adapting bibliographic standards to the domain of Brazilian popular music