A NeISS collaboration to develop and use e-infrastructure for large-scale social simulation

The National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation (NeISS) project is focused on developing e-Infrastructure to support social simulation research. Part of NeISS aims to provide an interface for running contemporary dynamic demographic social simulation models as developed in the GENESIS project. These GENESIS models operate at the individual person level and are stochastic. This paper focuses on support for a simplistic demographic change model that has a daily time steps, and is typically run for a number of years. A portal based Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been developed as a set of standard portlets. One portlet is for specifying model parameters and setting a simulation running. Another is for comparing the results of different simulation runs. Other portlets are for monitoring submitted jobs and for interfacing with an archive of results. A layer of programs enacted by the portlets stage data in and submit jobs to a Grid computer which then runs a specific GENESIS model program executable. Once a job is submitted, some details are communicated back to a job monitoring portlet. Once the job is completed, results are stored and made available for download and further processing. Collectively we call the system the Genesis Simulator. Progress in the development of the Genesis Simulator was presented at the UK e- Science All Hands Meeting in September 2011 by way of a video based demonstration of the GUI, and an oral presentation of a working paper. Since then, an automated framework has been developed to run simulations for a number of years in yearly time steps. The demographic models have also been improved in a number of ways. This paper summarises the work to date, presents some of the latest results and considers the next steps we are planning in this work

The introduction and development of the comprehensive school in the West of Scotland 1965-80

This study investigates the emergence of the comprehensive school following the issue of Scottish Education Department Circular 600 in 1965, and its focus is the area of west Central Scotland covered by Dunbartonshire, the City of Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. A major concern of the research is to examine how the secondary sector was affected by the transition from a bi-partite to a comprehensive system. The introduction gives a short account of the purpose of the research, its organisation and the methodology chosen. The thesis falls into six chapters. After a short examination of the comprehensive lobby in the post war period, Chapter One presents a literature survey in four sections: definitions of the comprehensive school, and some conceptual models; the cultural context, which highlights the characteristic features of the Scottish educational tradition; the political context, dealing with issues of central control, central-local government relations and the roles of local politicians and education officials; policy implementation and the management of innovation. These four themes form a conceptual framework against which to examine the data presented in the following chapters. Data for the thesis was gathered from two sources: a wide range of documentary material, and the transcripts of one hundred and fifty-two interviews conducted by the author with educationists and politicians. Data presented in Chapter Two leads to the following propositions: the comprehensive school was perceived as an English imposition on the Scottish system; official opinion in the Scottish Education Department was unfavourable to its introduction; optimistic claims for its educational and social potential were made in an ambiance of confusion about its definition; the Scottish Education Department conceived of the changeover principally in structural terms, and adopted a laissez-faire attitude to its philosophical implications; the advent of the comprehensive school caused widespread apprehension among educationist

A photon counting pixel detector for x-ray imaging

Hybrid semiconductor pixel detector technology is presented in this thesis as an alternative to current imaging systems in medical imaging and synchrotron radiation applications. The technology has been developed from research performed in High Energy Physics, in particular, for the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, planned for 2005. This thesis describes work done by the author on behalf of the MEDIPIX project, a collaboration between 13 international institutions for the development of hybrid pixel detectors for non-HEP applications. Chapter 1 describes the motivation for these detectors, the origin of the technology, and the current state of the art in imaging devices. A description of the requirements of medical imaging on X-ray sensors is described, and the properties of film and CCDs are discussed. The work of the RD19 collaboration is introduced to show the evolution of these devices. Chapter 2 presents the basic semiconductor theory required to understand the operation of these detectors, and a section on image theory introduces the fundamental parameters which are necessary to define the quality of an imaging device. Chapter 3 presents measurements made by the author on a photon counting detector (PCD1) comprising a PCC1 (MEDIPIX1) readout chip bumpbonded to silicon and gallium arsenide pixel detectors. Tests on the seperate readout chip and the bump-bonded assembly are shown with comparisons between the performance of the two materials. Measurements of signal-tonoise ratio, detection efficiency and noise performance are presented, along with an MTF measurement made by the Freiburg group. The X-ray tube energy spectrum was calibrated by REGAM. The performance of the PCD in a powder diffraction experiment using a synchrotron radiation source is described in chapter 4. This chapter reports the first use of a true 2-D hybrid pixel detector in a synchrotron application, and a comparison with the existing scintillator based technology is made. The measurements made by the author have been presented at the 1st International Workshop on Radiation Imaging Detectors at Sundsvall, Sweden, June 1999. The PCD1 operates in single photon counting mode, which attempts to overcome the limitations of charge integrating devices such as CCDs. The pros and cons of the two detection methods are discussed in chapter 5, and a comparison was made of the PCD1 performance with the performance of a commercial dental X-ray sensor. The two detectors are compared in terms of contrast and signal-to-noise ratio for identical X-ray fluences. The results were presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Radiation Imaging Detectors, Freiburg, Germany, 2nd-6th July 2000. The author was involved in the conversion of the LabWindows MRS software to a LabView platform, which was presented in an MSc- thesis in the University of Glasgow by F. Doherty. All image processing, data manipulation and analysis code was written by the author

Alien Registration- Watt, John (Blanchard Twp, Piscataquis County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/10192/thumbnail.jp

Journal of a voyage to the western pacific in the Melanesian mission yacht Southern Cross, 25 August - 10 November 1906

A diary kept by John Watt Beattie (1859-1930), a photographer of Hobart, Tasmania, to record his trip in the 'Southern Cross' from Norfolk Island to the Solomon Islands, via the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz islands, to take photographs of the islands and mission centres, at the invitation of Dr. Wilson, Bishop of Melanesia from 25 August to 10 November 1906. The original manuscript has been deposited in the Royal Society of Tasmania's Library by the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery (ref: RS.29/3). It is roughly written in pencil in a quarto notebook. The transcript was made by Linda Rodda and Lesley Elliot (University of Tasmania Archives) for the Royal Society of Tasmania. Beattie's spelling has been retained, although his regular use of 'to' for 'too' has usually been corrected, but the punctuation has occasionally been modified for clarity, including his use of the apostrophe in 'do'nt' for 'don't', and long entries split into paragraphs. From the Royal Society Collection RS29/

New Book: “Saving Lives in Wartime China: How Medical Reformers Built Modern Healthcare Systems amid War and Epidemics, 1928-1945”

In the 1920s and 1930s most Chinese people suffered from overwhelming health problems. Epidemic diseases killed tens of millions, drought, flood, starvation and famine killed many more, and unhygienic birthing, coupled with the inferior status of women, led to very high rates of maternal and child mortality. The Civil War between Nationalist and Communist forces, and the nation-wide War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945), imposed a further tide of misery and misfortune.Troubled by such extensive trauma, a small number of health care reformers, serving both Nationalist and Communist forces, were able to save tens of thousands of lives, promote hygiene and sanitation, and begin to bring battlefield casualties, communicable diseases, and maternal child mortality, under control. This study describes their work and its results. Date of Publication: November 2013Publisher: E. J. Brill, Leiden and BostonDate of Chinese Language Edition: August 2015Publisher: Fudan University Press Author Affiliation:John R. Watt is Vice President, the ABMAC Foundation (New York) and Visiting Professor, No. 3 People’s Hospital, Chengdu, China

Aristotle's view of human nature as a basis for ethical theory

The thesis examines Aristotle's ethical theory with primary reference to the Nicomachean Ethics (ED. It argues that the EX is intended not to improve its audience ethically, but rather to give it the political tools to pass an its already good life. The EN does this by articulating the goodness of that life and thus allowing the audience to enter effectively into ethical discussions. These form part of the process of passing on the good life by way of legislation in the polls and by more informal methods in institutions such as the household. The thesis examines in particular the accounts of practical reason, pleasure and the ergon argument in the Elf, and seeks to understand them in this context. It argues that by allowing the audience to improve the transmission of its values over the generations and by allowing its menbers to articulate the value of so doing, it moves the audience's life closer to divine perfection

An analytical study of one hundred cases of rheumatic heart disease in children

In this Thesis are given the results of an investigation into the social and medical histories of one hundred cases of rheumatic heart disease.In the first section of the Thesis are given the clinical findings upon which the diagnosis of heart disease has been based. In the next section follows the incidence rates of acute arthritis, chorea, growing pains, tonsillitis and scarlet fever, discovered in the histories of these patients. The results of tonsillectomy in the prevention of rheumatism are given. In other sections the subjects of enquiry are the social circumstances of the patients, and the relationship between the environment of the patients and the incidence of rheumatism among them.Two series of control cases have been used in these investigations, the first control series was a group of 600 children drawn from the same localities and schools as the rheumatic heart cases, and the second control series a group of 500 boys from a public school in the City.The examination of all these cases was carried out in the schools and school clinics in Hull, and in compiling their case- histories, use was made of Medical Âecords from the Maternity and Child Welfare Department and the School Medical Department of Hull. These records gave a very full account of the past illnesses of the children and added greatly to the reliability of the histories recorded.In the final section of the thesis are discussed and summarised the results from this enquiry

Crisis decision-making: the overlap between intuitive and analytical strategies

he paper draws on the naturalistic decision making (NDM) and cognitive science literature to examine how experienced crisis managers utilize the intuitive and analytical strategies when managing complex incidents. A cognitive model that describes the interplay between strategies is presented and discussed, and the specific role that intuition plays in analytical decision making is addressed.Designed as a conceptual paper, the extant literature is reviewed to advance discussions on the theme of intuitive and analytical decision making in the naturalistic environment. A new model of expert intuition ── the information filtering and intuitive decision model ── is presented and evaluated against existing cognitive models from the wider literature.The paper suggests that experts’ ability to make intuitive decisions is strongly hinged on their information processing skills that allow irrelevant cues to be sifted out while the relevant cues are retained. The paper further revealed that experts generally employ the intuitive mode as their default strategy, drawing on the analytical mode only as conditions warrant.Prior research has shown that experts often make important task decisions using intuitive or analytical strategies or by combining both, but the sequence these should typically follow is still unresolved. Findings from our intuition model reveal that although intuition often precedes analytical thinking in almost all cases, both strategies exist to offer significant values to decision makers if the basis of their application is well understood

Commentary and translation in Syriac Aristotelian scholarship: Sergius to Baghdad

This article considers the relationship between the composition in Syriac of commentaries on Aristotle and the translation of his treatises from the time of Sergius of Reshaina through to the Baghdad scholars of the 8th-10th centuries. Surveying the work particularly of Sergius, the scholarly translators of Qenneshre, and the interests of Patriarch Timothy I as evidenced in his letters, it argues that the translation activity up to the 8th century must be seen within the context of a school tradition in which the Syriac text of Aristotle was read in association with a written or oral commentary, or with the Greek text, or both. An appreciation of the link between commentary and translation, as also Syriac and Greek, in Graeco-Syriac Aristotelian scholarship of the 6th-8th centuries enables a better understanding of its relationship to the Syro-Arabic Aristotelian scholarship of Abbasid Baghdad