Torsional Rotordynamics of Machinery Equipment Strings

Short Cours

Concept Development for Software Health Management

This report documents the work performed by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (LM Aero) under NASA contract NNL06AA08B, delivery order NNL07AB06T. The Concept Development for Software Health Management (CDSHM) program was a NASA funded effort sponsored by the Integrated Vehicle Health Management Project, one of the four pillars of the NASA Aviation Safety Program. The CD-SHM program focused on defining a structured approach to software health management (SHM) through the development of a comprehensive failure taxonomy that is used to characterize the fundamental failure modes of safety-critical software

Inflated Responses in Measures of Self-Assessed Health

This paper focuses on the self-reported responses given to survey questions of the form In general how would you rate your health? with typical response items being on a scale ranging from poor to excellent. Usually, the overwhelming majority of responses fall in either the middle category or the one immediately to the "right" of this (in the above example, good and very good). However, based on a wide range of other medical indicators, such favourable responses appear to paint an overly rosy picture of true health. The hypothesis here is that these "middle" responses have been, in some sense, inflated. That is, for whatever reason, a significant number of responders inaccurately report into these categories. We find a significant amount of inflation into these categories. Adjusted responses to these questions could lead to significant changes in policy, and should be reflected upon when analysing and interpreting these scales

Heterogeneity in ordered choice models: A review with applications to self-assessed health

Discrete variables that have an inherent sense of ordering across outcomes are commonly found in large datasets available to many economists, and are often the focus of research. However, assumptions underlying the standard Ordered Probit (which is usually used to analyse such variables) are not always justied by the data. This study provides a review of the ways in which the Ordered Probit might be extended to account for additional heterogeneity. Diering from other reviews in scope, application and relevance in economic settings, a series of issues pertaining to choices of variables, and the economic assumptions underlying each model are discussed in the context of measuring the underlying health of respondents. The models are applied to a wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, in order to check the appropriateness of such assumptions in an applied context

Nineteenth-century Shakespeares: nationalism and moralism

This thesis shows that 'Shakespeare' (both the works and the man) was at the forefront of literary activity in the nineteenth century. By focusing on concerns about the identity of the British nation and its people it shows that Shakespeare was a constant presence in the debates of the day and that a number of agendas were pursued through what were ostensibly writings about Shakespeare's plays and the biography of their author. The Introduction first notes Shakespeare's transition from Elizabethan playwright to Victorian cultural icon and proceeds to outline nineteenth-century critical practice and changes in the social organisation of knowledge. From here the shift in how Shakespeare was considered is noted as well as the fact that, despite increasing interest in the history of the phenomenon, the nineteenth century has been largely neglected. What exploration there has been of this period has tended, by its nature as part of larger surveys or issue-specific studies, to oversimplify the complexities of nineteenth-century criticism. Further to this, the nineteenth century itself is often treated as a time of unsophisticated development and as a precursor to modern thought rather than a period of interest in its own right. A variety of what this thesis terms 'literary pursuits' during this period are then contextualised, as well as the changing role of the critic in nineteenth-century society. This is accompanied by an exploration of the community of readers and writers who would have engaged with these works. Finally, the methodological decisions which have directed this thesis are explained, including the privileging of page over stage, and the choice of those nineteenth-century writers who have been examined. The main body of the thesis is divided into two sections: Part One (Chapters One and Two) gives a broad taxonomy of ways in which nineteenth-century writers used Shakespeare as a means for addressing other issues, and Part Two (Chapter Three) uses a specific case study through which to examine these particular issues. It shows that attitudes to Shakespeare were shaped by an ongoing dialogue concerning the identity of the nation and its population. However, while there was much commonality regarding the agendas for which Shakespeare was used, the ways in which various different writers approached this was surprisingly diverse. Chapter One, 'Nationalism,' looks at how Shakespeare could be used in order to serve a nationalistic agenda: this involved either allying Shakespeare with the nation itself (by utilising Shakespeare's nationality, writing in a rhetorically charged manner, or interpreting Shakespeare's works in a certain fashion), or equating the nineteenth century with the early modern period (and highlighting various commonalities or differences with those times). The concept of nationalism is contextualised by looking at various attitudes to the nation which were driven by the challenges of the expanding Empire. Chapter Two, 'Moralism,' looks at the ways in which Shakespeare was used as a tool by those who sought to promote certain behavioural traits amongst their readers. The different ways in which writers made use of Shakespeare are situated within a discussion of nineteenth-century philosophical and moral positions. This chapter looks successively at what is termed 'Private Moralism' (a concern with abstract ideas, such as self-control and adherence to familial or religious ties), and 'Public Moralism' (that is, efforts to improve the outward or physical attributes of individuals, such as financial accumulation or class status). Part Two of the thesis focuses on how Victorian writers used Shakespeare specifically in relation to Shakespeare's Sonnets. To this end, Chapter Three, 'The Sonnets,' looks at how writings on the Sonnets pursued moral or nationalistic agendas. This chapter also seeks to draw together the strands of nationalism and moralism by showing that anxieties about the state of Britain fed into writing about the Sonnets at this time and that this involved a complex debate about the Sonnets, ancient Greece, and the nature of what would today be termed homosexuality. A significant contention of this chapter is that nineteenth-century attitudes towards the Sonnets need to be appreciated on their own terms rather than anachronistically via a modern understanding of homosexuality. The Conclusion suggests that Shakespeare was used by nineteenth-century critics and biographers as a location within which to debate certain overarching concerns of the day. How these issues were approached, however, took different forms and Shakespeare was employed for different ends, which points to a general unease regarding the identity of the nation. As the formal institutionalising of the English Literary canon was taking place during the period covered by this thesis it seems reasonable to suggest that the use of Shakespeare was related to Shakespeare's position of dominance within the canon. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the ease with which Shakespeare could be used - as well as the unavoidable difficulties which are attendant with Shakespeare - might have affected this process of canonisation

A latent class model for obesity

We extend the discrete data latent class literature by explicitly defining a latent variable for class membership as a function of both observables and unobservables, thereby allowing the equations defining the class membership and observed outcomes to be correlated. The procedure is then applied to modelling observed obesity outcomes, based upon an underlying ordered probit equation

Regional Responses: The Sustainable Food North West Research Collaboration

This paper describes the conception and initial phase of the North West Sustainable Food Research Collaboration (SusfoodNW). It provides summary findings from exploratory work packages which commenced at the beginning of the initiative and feedback from regional stakeholders concerning the role and challenges for regional academic collaborations and sustainable food research more broadly. As such, it is a collection of reflections and research outputs that aim to illustrate: a) The process of academics from neighbouring institutions working together with a regional focus but without significant external resource b) Some findings from initial research on the region which aimed to map and understand some of the context for sustainable food in the region and provide a grounding for further research c) A snapshot of regional stakeholder opinion in relation to the focus and activities of a regional research collaboratio

Torsional Rotordynamics of Machinery Equipment Strings

Short Cours

Frustrated pretransitional phenomena in aperiodic composites

Citation: Mariette, C., Frantsuzov, I., Wang, B., Guerin, L., Rabiller, P., Hollingsworth, M. D., & Toudic, B. (2016). Frustrated pretransitional phenomena in aperiodic composites. Physical Review B, 94(18), 9. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.94.184105This paper reports on symmetry breaking in the aperiodic inclusion compound n-octadecane/urea and its isotopomer n-octadecane/urea-d(4). The high-symmetry phase is described by a hexagonal rank-4 superspace group. Pretransitional phenomena in this crystallographic superspace reveal competing short-range-ordering phenomena within the high-symmetry phase. Very high-resolution diffraction data show that critical scattering appears at inequivalent points within the four-dimensional Brillouin zone, although the first phase transition at T-c1 near 158 K implies the condensation at only one of those points. The resulting superspace group remains of dimension 4. Two other phase transitions are reported at T-c2 = 152.8(4) K and T-c3 = 109(4) K in n-octadecane/urea-d(4). The two low-symmetry phases that arise are described by rank-5 superspace groups