Ice Cream

Ice Cream is a series of 2D and 3D depictions of lawn ornaments, Charlie Brown, and novelty ice cream bars, which question how White America is indoctrinated through seemingly innocuous images and objects. The exhibition unveils the white supremacy fostered within the American way of life and articulates an environment where Americans act in racist ways when they believe they are acting morally. The research found within Ice Cream attempts to dismantle the foundation these justifications are built upon. This honesty, coupled with acknowledging that these historic traditions are rooted in racial constructs, will result in a double consciousness and the ability to move toward building an inclusive human community

Optimal interval clustering: Application to Bregman clustering and statistical mixture learning

We present a generic dynamic programming method to compute the optimal clustering of $n$ scalar elements into $k$ pairwise disjoint intervals. This case includes 1D Euclidean $k$-means, $k$-medoids, $k$-medians, $k$-centers, etc. We extend the method to incorporate cluster size constraints and show how to choose the appropriate $k$ by model selection. Finally, we illustrate and refine the method on two case studies: Bregman clustering and statistical mixture learning maximizing the complete likelihood.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Vertical-axis wind turbines in oblique flow: sensitivity to rotor geometry

Increasing interest is being shown worldwide in the application of vertical-axis wind turbines for decentralised electricity generation within cities. The distortion of the onset air flow by buildings within the urban environment might however, under certain conditions of wind speed or direction, cause vertical-axis wind turbines to operate in oblique flow – in other words in conditions in which the wind vector is non-perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the turbine. Little is known about the effect on the operation of a vertical-axis wind turbine when the wind is perturbed from supposedly optimal conditions. In the present study, the Vorticity Transport Model has been used to simulate the aerodynamic performance and wake dynamics, both in normal and in oblique flow, of three different vertical-axis wind turbines: one with a straight-bladed configuration, another with a curved-bladed configuration and another with a helically twisted configuration. The results partly confirm previous experimental measurements that suggest that a straight-bladed vertical-axis wind turbine that operates in oblique flow might produce a higher power coefficient compared to when it is operated in normal flow. The simulations suggest, however, that significantly higher power coefficients in oblique flow are obtained only at higher tip speed ratios, and indeed only if the height of the turbine is not large compared to its radius. Furthermore, it is shown that a vertical-axis wind turbine with blades that are helically twisted around its rotational axis produces a relatively steady power coefficient in both normal and oblique flow when compared to that produced by turbines with either a straight- or a curved-bladed configuration