Post-Darwin skepticism and run-of-the-mill suicide

Peña-Guzmán’s depiction of the opponent of animal suicide as a conservative is a straw man. It is possible to accept that animals are self-conscious and reflexive yet still reject the view that they have the mental wherewithal to commit run-of-the-mill suicide. That animal behaviour can be positioned on a continuum of self-destructive behaviour does not establish that animals can intentionally kill themselves

Social Media Influencers List: The Normal Brand

For my capstone/internship, I was tasked with finding 100 social media influencers that matched the aesthetic, style, and image of the Normal Brand. From there, I picked a top 20 and then curated care packages with merchandise for each specific influencer. This project was a way of branching out and marketing to new costumers. Attached is the top 100 list as well as the boxes used

Sacred Civic Space in Langley Park

The suburban setting of Langley Park, Maryland is a densely inhabited neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C. Nearly two-thirds of its residents are Hispanic but the Catholic Church struggles to serve this community because of a lack of proximate parish churches. This thesis proposes the design of a church and outreach center within the heart of historic Langley Park. The church and adjoining building respond to their suburban context in an attempt to add hierarchy and cohesion to a spatially unstructured neighborhood of garden apartment buildings. An urban plaza, defined by the proposed church, outreach center as well as the historic Langley Park mansion, begins to organize the neighborhood and give the community much needed civic resources and identity. In aesthetic expression and spatial organization, the complex speaks to the idea that the Church ought to engage the outside world and seek to minister to the unique needs of the surrounding immigrant population

The Value of Relaxation As Preparation For Rational Psychotherapy

The suggested uses of relaxation given by the technique of Freud coupled with the findings of Jacobson, Ferenczi and Bagchi have prompted the investigator to make some observations of the function of relaxation in rational psychotherapy. This presupposes that relaxation is used with considerable discretion. The investigation has been stimulated by a growing tendency in the Fort Hays Kansas State College Psychological Clinic to treat patients from the standpoint of the whole individual until specific traumata can be discovered In considering the value of relaxation, it may be well to think of the individual in much the same manner as does Lewin in setting forth the principles of topological psychology. The investigator considers the individual as a complex system of tensions operating in a topological field of forces. Anything which affects the individual affects more or less the entire individual and his adjustment toward the forces which limit his activity. In the mentally and physically healthy individual, all of these tensions and forces are in balance. When the system is thrown out of balance, it seems well to suppose that the first step in restoring the healthy balance is to reduce to a minimum the tens ions surrounding the individual. It is indicated that the real tension or disturbing factor can be more easily discovered if all extraneous tensions are removed. The system probably cannot be restored to complete balance, however, until the real trauma is removed or adjusted to

The Optimisation of Stochastic Grammars to Enable Cost-Effective Probabilistic Structural Testing

The effectiveness of probabilistic structural testing depends on the characteristics of the probability distribution from which test inputs are sampled at random. Metaheuristic search has been shown to be a practical method of optimis- ing the characteristics of such distributions. However, the applicability of the existing search-based algorithm is lim- ited by the requirement that the software’s inputs must be a fixed number of numeric values. In this paper we relax this limitation by means of a new representation for the probability distribution. The repre- sentation is based on stochastic context-free grammars but incorporates two novel extensions: conditional production weights and the aggregation of terminal symbols represent- ing numeric values. We demonstrate that an algorithm which combines the new representation with hill-climbing search is able to effi- ciently derive probability distributions suitable for testing software with structurally-complex input domains

Are Photogrammetry and 3D Scanning a real alternative to 3D modelling for Virtual Heritage applications?

Photogrammetry is promoted as a quick way to create realistic 3D models, while handheld 3D scanners are advertised for projects that require greater accuracy. Both technologies are increasingly being targeted for virtual Heritage applications. This paper presents the initial findings of a project that compares both methods for creating assets to be used in game engines to make interactive presentations. A range of test objects were chosen from small artefacts of about 10 cm up to ground features of about 8m in length. Hardware included the Faro Freestyle handset, while photographs were taken using a Nikon digital camera. An iPhone was also found to take adequate images and had an advantage in confined spaces. The time it takes to capture data was equivalent for both methods. More photographs and data points improve the accuracy of models. Bright sunshine was a problem for both methods: the 3D scanner was unable to pick up any data, while hard shadows in photographs produced artefacts in the resulting model. Processing software included Scene, Meshlab and ReCap. The scanner software was quicker to process but stitching together multiple scans can lead to inaccuracies. The polygon count of the resulting models is too high to use in UE4 so further manipulation was required using Maya and Z-Brush. The creation of Normal maps can help preserve detail, but the accuracy of textures is diminished. To modify the models to enable them to be used within interactive game engines still requires a high degree of 3D modelling expertise