3,161 research outputs found
Fire safety in buildings
Many buildings, in many countries, throughout the world have substandard fire safety features. This discussion is restricted to hotels and hostels, which are often the only types of buildings readily accessible by visitors to a country. It attempts to explore some of the difficulties in that many building regulatory agents in some countries are not ensuring all buildings are safe from fire. It recommends that in the absence of fully safe buildings from the statutory approval process, private consortia of building owners should be initiating their own safety checklists
Evolution of Ada technology in the flight dynamics area: Design phase analysis
The software engineering issues related to the use of the Ada programming language during the design phase of an Ada project are analyzed. Discussion shows how an evolving understanding of these issues is reflected in the design processes of three generations of Ada projects
The Effects of the Help One Student to Succeed (HOSTS) Program on the Reading Achievement of At-Risk 4th and 5th Grade Elementary Students
This study investigated the effects of the Help One Student to Succeed (HOSTS) tutoring program on the reading achievement of at-risk 4th and 5th grade elementary students, as measured by the Texas Assessment of Academic Skill (TAAS). Seventy-eight 4th and 5th grade at-risk students from four Title I elementary schools in the Plano Independent School District participated in the study. Thirty-nine of these students were enrolled in the HOSTS program and were matched to a comparison group of students according to ethnicity, age, gender, grade, free or reduced lunch, bilingual and English as a Second language status.
The results of the present investigation were as follows: (a) of the thirty-nine at-risk 4th and 5th grade students enrolled in the HOSTS program, 28 students (72%) met or exceeded the minimum requirements on the TAAS exam, (b) data on the difference in reading achievement between the two groups of 4th grade students were not statistically significant, and (c) data on the difference in reading achievement between the two groups of 5th Trade HOSTS students were statistically significant. Together, these findings underscore the many factors that must considered when using tutoring programs to supplement general education environments for at-risk students. Finally, the mixed results support the need for further research
Information erasure without an energy cost
Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a
memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of
mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero
by paying a cost in angular momentum or any other conserved quantity. Erasing
the memory of Maxwell's demon in this way implies that work can be extracted
from a single thermal reservoir at a cost of angular momentum and an increase
in total entropy. The implications of this for the second law of thermodynamics
are assessed.Comment: 8 pages with 1 figure. Final published versio
VeraSun Corn Suppliers Must Respond to Preference Demand Letter by Sept. 30
Iowans who received payment for corn or other services from VeraSun within 90 days of the company’s filing for bankruptcy on Oct. 30, 2008 received preference demand letters at the end of August. The letters came from one of two New York law firms and demand that the supplier return a percent of the payments received from VeraSun during that 90-day period
Density functional theory study of the nematic-isotropic transition in an hybrid cell
We have employed the Density Functional Theory formalism to investigate the
nematic-isotropic capillary transitions of a nematogen confined by walls that
favor antagonist orientations to the liquid crystal molecules (hybrid cell). We
analyse the behavior of the capillary transition as a function of the
fluid-substrate interactions and the pore width. In addition to the usual
capillary transition between isotropic-like to nematic-like states, we find
that this transition can be suppressed when one substrate is wet by the
isotropic phase and the other by the nematic phase. Under this condition the
system presents interface-like states which allow to continuously transform the
nematic-like phase to the isotropic-like phase without undergoing a phase
transition. Two different mechanisms for the disappearance of the capillary
transition are identified. When the director of the nematic-like state is
homogeneously planar-anchored with respect to the substrates, the capillary
transition ends up in a critical point. This scenario is analogous to the
observed in Ising models when confined in slit pores with opposing surface
fields which have critical wetting transitions. When the nematic-like state has
a linearly distorted director field, the capillary transition continuously
transforms in a transition between two nematic-like states.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figures, submitted to J. Chem. Phy
Mean field approaches to the totally asymmetric exclusion process with quenched disorder and large particles
The process of protein synthesis in biological systems resembles a one
dimensional driven lattice gas in which the particles (ribosomes) have spatial
extent, covering more than one lattice site. Realistic, nonuniform gene
sequences lead to quenched disorder in the particle hopping rates. We study the
totally asymmetric exclusion process with large particles and quenched disorder
via several mean field approaches and compare the mean field results with Monte
Carlo simulations. Mean field equations obtained from the literature are found
to be reasonably effective in describing this system. A numerical technique is
developed for computing the particle current rapidly. The mean field approach
is extended to include two-point correlations between adjacent sites. The
two-point results are found to match Monte Carlo simulations more closely
Evolution of Ada technology in the flight dynamics area: Implementation/testing phase analysis
An analysis is presented of the software engineering issues related to the use of Ada for the implementation and system testing phases of four Ada projects developed in the flight dynamics area. These projects reflect an evolving understanding of more effective use of Ada features. In addition, the testing methodology used on these projects has changed substantially from that used on previous FORTRAN projects
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