817 research outputs found

    The turtles of the Purbeck Limestone Group of Dorset, southern England

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    The turtles from the Purbeck Limestone are revised and it is concluded that there are four shell-based cryptodire species present, namely Pleurosternon bullockii, ‘Glyptops’typocardium comb. nov., Helochelydra anglica comb. nov.,Hylaeochelys latiscutata. There is also one skull-based species, Dorsetochelys delairi, which may prove to be the skull of ‘Glyptops’, Hylaeochelys or an unknown shell-type. All other taxa are junior synonyms except ‘Chelone’obovata Owen, 1842 and Tretosternon punctatum Owen, 1842 which are nomina dubia, the material being unfigured and either lost or incorrectly associated. Other taxonomic conclusions are that (1) because Tretosternon is a nomen dubium, the next senior name for this Purbeck–Wealden genus is Helochelydra Nopcsa, 1928; (2) ‘Pleurosternon’typocardium and ‘Glyptops’ruetimeyeri are synonymous, the senior combination being ‘Glyptops’typocardium; (3) the Purbeck ‘Tretosternon’ material is combined with the holotype and only specimen of Platychelys? anglica as Helochelydra anglica comb. nov.; (4) Hylaeochelys emarginata and H. sollasi are junior synonyms of Hylaeochelys latiscutata; (5) one of Owen's ‘lost’ syntypes of ‘Tretosternon punctatum’ has been recognised and is a plastron of Hylaeochelys latiscutata

    The Sea and Eternal Summer: Science Fiction, Futurology and Climate Change

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    This paper will be concerned to analyse what is almost certainly the earliest Australian climate change dystopia. In 1985 George Turner published a short story, The Fittest, in which he began to explore the fictional possibilities of the effects of global warming. He quickly expanded this story into a full-length novel published as The Sea and Summer in Britain and as Drowning Towers in the United States. The Sea and Summer is set mainly in Melbourne, a vividly described, particular place, terrifyingly transformed into the utterly unfamiliar. Turner’s core narrative describes a world of mass unemployment and social polarisation, in which rising sea levels have inundated the Bayside suburbs; the poor ‘Swill’ live in high-rise tower blocks, the lower floors of which are progressively submerged; the wealthier ‘Sweet’ in suburbia on higher ground. The paper will argue that Turner’s novel is long overdue a positive critical re-evaluation.

    The tetrapod Caerorhachis bairdi Holmes and Carroll from the Lower Carboniferous of Scotland

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    The tetrapod Caerorhachis bairdi, probably from the Pendleian Limestone Coal Group in the Scottish Midland Valley, is redi agnosed and redescribed, and its affinities are discussed. Caerorachis was originally interpreted as a temnospondyl amphibian, based on characters that are now regarded as primitive for tetrapods, or of uncertain polarity. Several features of Caerorhachis (e.g. gastrocentrous vertebrae, curved trunk ribs, reduced dorsal iliac blade, L-shaped tarsal intermedium) are observed in certain primitive amniotes. In particular, Caerorhachis resembles ‘anthracosaurs’, generally considered to be among the most primitive of stem-group amniotes. The phylogenetic position of Caerorhachis is considered in the light of recently published cladistic analyses of Palaeozoic tetrapods. Most analyses place Caerorhachis at the base of, or within, ‘anthra- cosaurs’. When multiple, equally parsimonious solutions are found, its ‘anthracosaur’ affinities are shown in at least some trees, and are supported by several informative and, generally, highly consistent characters. Alternative phylogenetic placements (e.g. sister taxon to temnospondyls) are usually less well corroborated. If the fundamental evolutionary split of most early tetrapods into stem-group lissamphibians (e.g. temnospondyl s) and stem-group amniotes (e.g. ‘anthracosaurs’) is accepted, then the revised interpretation of Caerorhachi s sheds light on near-ancestral conditions for Amniota

    The prediction of the outermost trajectory of media in a grinding mill for lifter bars with rounded or worn profiles

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    This thesis presents the analysis of the path of a ball on the inside of a ball mill for lifter bars with rounded or worn profiles. The model predicts the response of a single ball with particular reference to the balls trajectory after departure from the lifter bar and incorporates the effect of friction, mill rotational speed, lifter height as well as different lifter bar profiles. The out of plane travel of the particles are ignored and hence the system is reduced to a two dimensional problem. A set of experiments were performed on a model perspex mill in order to obtain data by which the theory could be compared. The lifter bar is analysed using a parabolic expression which allows the shape to be changed to model various stages oflifter wear. Two possible formulations are investigated in determining the motion of the particle on the lifter bar. The first formulation assumes the ball to roll on the lifter bar until a limiting friction is reached after which the ball will slide along the lifter. The second formulation considers the ball to have a pure sliding motion on the lifter

    Philanthropy in Brazil Report

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    This report on Brazilian philanthropy is part of a larger study by Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace (PSJP), started in 2016, to review the current state of philanthropy in emerging economies and the role philanthropy is playing in the world today. This is the fourth report from the study, which will eventually form part of the Philanthropy Bridge Series

    Regular Expression Matching and Operational Semantics

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    Many programming languages and tools, ranging from grep to the Java String library, contain regular expression matchers. Rather than first translating a regular expression into a deterministic finite automaton, such implementations typically match the regular expression on the fly. Thus they can be seen as virtual machines interpreting the regular expression much as if it were a program with some non-deterministic constructs such as the Kleene star. We formalize this implementation technique for regular expression matching using operational semantics. Specifically, we derive a series of abstract machines, moving from the abstract definition of matching to increasingly realistic machines. First a continuation is added to the operational semantics to describe what remains to be matched after the current expression. Next, we represent the expression as a data structure using pointers, which enables redundant searches to be eliminated via testing for pointer equality. From there, we arrive both at Thompson's lockstep construction and a machine that performs some operations in parallel, suitable for implementation on a large number of cores, such as a GPU. We formalize the parallel machine using process algebra and report some preliminary experiments with an implementation on a graphics processor using CUDA.Comment: In Proceedings SOS 2011, arXiv:1108.279

    The Global Landscape of Philanthropy - Indonesian Version

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    From a description of various forms of individual giving to the growing importance of community philanthropy and structured, institutional giving, the current report is an effort to bring back the diversity of the field of philanthropy at the center of the debate, by drawing a comprehensive and provocative picture of current trends and challenges of the field. The report also raises some of the questions and issues most critical and central to its development – from technology and shrinking civic space to power dynamics within philanthropy practice and concepts, to the evolving role and form of philanthropy infrastructure

    The Global Landscape of Philanthropy - Mandarin Chinese Version

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    From a description of various forms of individual giving to the growing importance of community philanthropy and structured, institutional giving, the current report is an effort to bring back the diversity of the field of philanthropy at the center of the debate, by drawing a comprehensive and provocative picture of current trends and challenges of the field. The report also raises some of the questions and issues most critical and central to its development – from technology and shrinking civic space to power dynamics within philanthropy practice and concepts, to the evolving role and form of philanthropy infrastructure
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