INFO2009 Group 1 -- Open Source Software Licensing Infographic

An infographic for open source software licensing. This resource can serve as a simple introduction to open source software licensing, and as a reference for future use

Agricultural trade liberalization under bilateralism : an international network perspective

Global negotiations in agricultural trade have been considered unsuccessful. Given this fact, the paper studies whether bilateral agreements, rather than global agreements, can lead to Agricultural Global Free Trade by means of decoupled and compensatory payments. For this purpose, the new advances of the international trade network literature have beenadopted.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

THE NATURE OF SCHOOL OF EDUCATION FACULTY WORK AND MATERIALS FOR PROMOTION AND TENURE AT A MAJOR RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

A critical issue facing university administrators and faculty, especially in professional schools, is the mismatch between promotion and tenure criteria and daily demands on faculty time. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among institutional and personal expectations of faculty about the relative importance of teaching, research, and service activities as criteria for awarding faculty promotion and tenure in a School of Education, and its relationship to faculty work. By documenting the nature and extent of school of education faculty activities and products and relating them to institutional expectations and faculty members' own perspectives on the relative importance of the three roles of research, teaching and service, the nature and degree of mismatches were described, and a better foundation for more appropriate promotion and tenure guidelines could be developed.Although individuals varied greatly, overall faculty reported spending 44.4% on teaching-related activities, 35.2% on research, and 20.3% service. They generally agreed that the promotion and tenure process weighted them as 25.6% teaching, 65.6% research, and 8.7% on service. Faculty recommended that these weightings be changed to 37.2% teaching, 49.3% research, and 13.5% service. These suggested changes still kept research as the most highly rated, with teaching second, and service a distant third. Although the changes made teaching more important in promotion and tenure decisions, how the individual school of education faculty spent their time varied greatly.It was recommended that professional schools review these relationships in their settings, and find ways to make promotion and tenure decisions more consistent with the work faculty carry out

Integrated Inp Photonic Switches

Photonic switches are becoming key components in advanced optical networks because of the large variety of applications that they can perform. One of the key advantages of photonic switches is that they redirect or convert light without having to make any optical to electronic conversions and vice versa, thus allowing networking functions to be lowered into the optical layer. InP-based switches are particularly attractive because of their small size, low electrical power consumption, and compatibility with integration of laser sources, photo-detectors, and electronic components. In this dissertation the development of integrated InP photonic switches using an area-selective zinc diffusion process has been investigated. The zinc diffusion process is implemented using a semi-sealed open-tube diffusion technique. The process has proven to be highly controllable and reproducible by carefully monitoring of the diffusion parameters. Using this technique, isolated p-n junctions exhibiting good I-V characteristics and breakdown voltages greater than 10 V can be selectively defined across a semiconductor wafer. A series of Mach-Zehnder interferometric (MZI) switches/modulators have been designed and fabricated. Monolithic integration of 1x2 and 2x2 MZI switches has been demonstrated. The diffusion process circumvents the need for isolation trenches, and hence optical losses can be significantly reduced. An efficient optical beam steering device based on InGaAsP multiple quantum wells is also demonstrated. The degree of lateral current spreading is easily regulated by controlling the zinc depth, allowing optimization of the injected currents. Beam steering over a 21 microns lateral distance with electrical current values as low as 12.5 mA are demonstrated. Using this principle, a reconfigurable 1x3 switch has been implemented with crosstalk levels better than -17 dB over a 50 nm wavelength range. At these low electrical current levels, uncooled and d.c. bias operation is made feasible. The use of multimode interference (MMI) structures as active devices have also been investigated. These devices operate by selective refractive index perturbation on very specific areas within the MMI structure, and this is again realized using zinc diffusion. Several variants such as a compact MMI modulator that is as short as 350 µm, a robust 2x2 photonic switch and a tunable MMI coupler have been demonstrated

Nonlinear Dynamic Invariants for Continuous Speech Recognition

In this work, nonlinear acoustic information is combined with traditional linear acoustic information in order to produce a noise-robust set of features for speech recognition. Classical acoustic modeling techniques for speech recognition have relied on a standard assumption of linear acoustics where signal processing is primarily performed in the signal\u27s frequency domain. While these conventional techniques have demonstrated good performance under controlled conditions, the performance of these systems suffers significant degradations when the acoustic data is contaminated with previously unseen noise. The objective of this thesis was to determine whether nonlinear dynamic invariants are able to boost speech recognition performance when combined with traditional acoustic features. Several sets of experiments are used to evaluate both clean and noisy speech data. The invariants resulted in a maximum relative increase of 11.1% for the clean evaluation set. However, an average relative decrease of 7.6% was observed for the noise-contaminated evaluation sets. The fact that recognition performance decreased with the use of dynamic invariants suggests that additional research is required for robust filtering of phase spaces constructed from noisy time series

Cleaning and Upgrading of Post Consumer Corrugated Containers as a Secondary Fiber Source

Introduction The use of secondary fiber as a source of raw material in the paper industry is now an important reality ingrained into papermaking. The reasons for using secondary fiber are many and diversified but most point to economy as the primary factor. With wood and virgin pulp becoming more expensive, secondary fiber will undoubtedly maintain its place in the industry and may increase in the future. Total paper production is approaching 88,000,000 tons. Of this total only 23,000,000 is recycled. With nearly 64% of total paper production going to waste either through landfill, incineration or other disposal methods it is obvious that a lot of resources are being lost and wasted. (19) Recovery is mostly motivated by economic incentives however. As virgin pulp and wood costs rise, secondary fiber use becomes more attractive. At times like the present, with virgin pulp prices bottoming out less demand is created for secondary fiber. (16) Recovery can be attractive from several standpoints; capitol costs are generally less than a regular pulp mill, mill space is also less, raw material sources may be closer at hand especially in urban areas, some favorable pulp qualities may also be obtained using secondary fiber. Lower energy requirements are another factor. (16

Economic Importance of The Iowa Egg Industry

The egg production and processing industry has a significant impact on Iowa's economy. And if consumer demand for eggs continues to increase and Iowa continues its commitment to grow the industry, expansion of Iowa's egg industry will continue.

Validação de método experimental para medição do potencial de corrosão de liga metálica em sangue humano in vivo

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Médicas, Florianópolis, 2011Justificativa: Ligas metálicas são utilizadas em dispositivos médicos para uso intravascular, principalmente na forma de stents, endopróteses, filtro de veia cava e coils. Todos os implantes metálicos sofrem corrosão após serem implantados no corpo humano. As propriedades físicas e de superfície desses materiais como seu comportamento corrosivo ainda não foram totalmente elucidadas, sendo este conhecimento fundamental para que seja possível evitar complicações destas ligas metálicas. Objetivo: Descrever um modelo experimental para medição do potencial de corrosão (Ecorr) de uma liga metálica no sangue humano em circulação e in vivo e realizar a medição do Ecorr da liga de NiTi. Desenho do Estudo: Estudo experimental, não controlado, analítico do tipo longitudinal. Métodos: Foi mensurado o Ecorr em seis pacientes submetidos à cirurgia arterial direta onde a aorta abdominal, artéria ilíaca ou artéria femoral foram expostas. Antes de se proceder o clampeamento arterial e a arteriotomia, foi mensurada a diferença de potencial de corrosão do NiTi através de um dispositivo constituído por eletrodos de NiTi e pseudo-eletrodo de Pt, que permanecia em contato com o sangue circulante durante um período de 12 minutos fazendo a medição do Ecorr. Para o uso do pseudo-eletrodo de Pt o dispositivo foi previamente validado em testes in vitro. Resultados: Ecorr da liga de NiTi em sangue humano in vivo e em circulação foi de -227,94 (± 27,76)mV. A medida do coeficiente de correlação intraclasse entre os 6 pacientes apresentaram-se compatíveis entre si. Conclusão: O método descrito para medição do Ecorr mostrou-se reprodutível e confiável, podendo servir de modelo experimental para futuros trabalhos com outras ligas metálicasBackground: Metal alloys are used in the manufacturing of intravascular devices such as stents, endoprosthesis, vena cava filters, and coils. All metallic implants are prone to corrosion after placement into the human body. Since the physical and surface properties of metal alloys are not entirely clear, this knowledge becomes essential to reduce clinical complications related to these implants. Objectives: Describe an experimental model to measure the corrosion potential (Ecorr) of a metal alloy in human blood in circulation and in vivo and perform the measurement of Ecorr NiTi alloy. Study design: Experimental, noncontrolled, analytical, longitudinal study. Methods: The Ecorr was measured in 6 patients who underwent open vascular surgery with exposition of the abdominal aorta, iliac artery, or the femoral artery. Before the arterial clamping and arteriotomy, the NiTi Ecorr was measured by the use of a dispositive constituted of NiTi electrodes and a Platinum (Pt) pseudo-reference electrode which were placed into the human circulation during 12 minutes. The Pt pseudo-reference electrode has been previously validated in vitro testing. Results: The measure of the NiTi Ecorr in the human circulation was -227.94 (± 27.76) mV. The correlation coefficient was compatible among the 6 patients. Conclusion: The reported method to measure the Ecorr was shown to be reproducible and reliable, and it may be used in future research with other metal alloy