The Mall Ain’t Dead Yet! An Aristotelian argument for the continuation of physical retail space with the rise of modern technology

According to Aristotle, for a human being to live their best life, that is a life that flourishes, is to live a political life. A political life is lived best in a polis , or a self - sufficient community, so therefore, the most flourishing human life is one lived in a polis . Also, for a polis to be self - sufficient, its citizens must be flourishing, so there exists a special sort of constitutive relationship between the polis and its citizens. There are certain capacities available to human beings in the polis that promote their flourishing (namely loyalty and trust) that help fulfill important human needs. These capacities are best carried out through various subcommunities in the polis . Subcommunities range in size and interest, but the ones that best fulfil l important human needs also contribute most to the polis, and thus contribute most to human flourishing. In this paper, I will argue that physical retail space is a particular kind of subcommunity that can fulfill an important human need. While it is popular opinion that the shopping mall, and more - broadly physical retail as a whole, does not have a place in the increasingly technologically savvy community, physical retail space offers humans a place to engage that is necessary for their flourishing

Race and Religion as Moderators of Perceived Friendliness

An individual\u27s identity involves membership in various groups, such as gender or race. Previous research on stereotyping has shown that while groups are often attributed with both positive and negative characteristics, certain groups are overall viewed more negatively. For example, past research regarding race has found overwhelming support for pro-White attitudes and more negative attitudes associated with minority groups. Religion is a group which may form part of the basis for one\u27s identity and research has shown generally positive attitudes associated with religion and those affiliated with various religions, with negative Muslim-associated biases standing as the primary and consistent exception. Finally, because individuals strive to maintain a positive self-view, research has shown that they tend to rate their in-group more positively. The current study seeks to explore the relationship between race and religious affiliation on person perception. Specifically, members of a primarily White, Catholic, private university were shown images of either a White or Middle Eastern individual and half in each condition were also provided with a manipulation of religious affiliation as either Catholic or Muslim (consistent with race). It was expected that the White Catholic participants would rate the White Catholic man most positively and the Middle Eastern Muslim man the least positively, however the data were inconsistent with this prediction. Specifically, the Middle Eastern individual was rated more positively than the White individual, and the non-religious Middle Eastern individual was rated higher than both the White conditions. Potential reasons for this surprising result are discussed along with limitations and future directions

Feature recognition in OCR text

This thesis investigates the recognition and extraction of special word sequences, representing concepts, from OCR text. Unlike general index terms, concepts can consist of one or more terms that combined, have higher retrieval value than the terms alone (i.e. acronyms, proper nouns, phrases). An algorithm to recognize acronyms and their definitions will be presented. An evaluation of the algorithm will also be presented

Flow transitions in two-dimensional foams

For sufficiently slow rates of strain, flowing foam can exhibit inhomogeneous flows. The nature of these flows is an area of active study in both two-dimensional model foams and three dimensional foam. Recent work in three-dimensional foam has identified three distinct regimes of flow [S. Rodts, J. C. Baudez, and P. Coussot, Europhys. Lett. {\bf 69}, 636 (2005)]. Two of these regimes are identified with continuum behavior (full flow and shear-banding), and the third regime is identified as a discrete regime exhibiting extreme localization. In this paper, the discrete regime is studied in more detail using a model two dimensional foam: a bubble raft. We characterize the behavior of the bubble raft subjected to a constant rate of strain as a function of time, system size, and applied rate of strain. We observe localized flow that is consistent with the coexistence of a power-law fluid with rigid body rotation. As a function of applied rate of strain, there is a transition from a continuum description of the flow to discrete flow when the thickness of the flow region is approximately 10 bubbles. This occurs at an applied rotation rate of approximately $0.07 {\rm s^{-1}}$