The rimo filter

Up to the present time, there has existed no general method for obtaining the pole locations of minimum-phase constant time delay filters of desired selectivity. Since constant time delay filters are necessary for low distortion FM transmission, and minimum-phase filters are easy to construct and align, a general method for locating the poles of minimum-phase constant time delay filters would be of considerable importance. Presented in this paper is a procedure for locating the poles of minimum-phase constant time delay filters of desired selectivity, using a FORTRAN digital computer program. Two experimental FM receivers were built to test. the new filter characteristic, and the performance of these receivers is discussed

Aspects Of Morphology In Female Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus Mutus) During Ovarian Recrudescence

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 197

Towards Distributed BPEL Orchestrations

Web services are imposing as the technology to integrate highly heterogeneous systems. BPEL, the standard technology to compose services, assumes a single âorchestratorâ that controls the execution flow and coordinates the interactions with selected services. This centralized approach simplifies the coordination among components, but it is also a too heavy constraint. To this end, the paper introduces the idea of distributed orchestrations and presents a proposal to couple BPEL and distributed execution in mobile settings. The approach âexemplified on a simple case studyâ transforms a centralized BPEL process into a set of coordinated processes. An explicit meta-model and graph transformation supply the formal grounding to obtain a set of related processes, and to add the communication infrastructure among the newly created processes. The paper also presents a communication infrastructure based on tuple spaces to make the different orchestrators interact in mobile contexts. Keywords: WS-BPEL, Grap

The role of media in community resilience: Hindsight bias in media narratives after the 2014 Genoa flood

Aim: A massive flood due to exceptional rainfalls devastated the town of Genoa on 9 October2014. Media reports focused on the disaster, its causes and the political accountabilities. Reading facts after the event is commonly biased by the hindsight perspective and the aim of the paper is to investigate the amount and the potential effects of hindsight bias in terms of citizens risk perception and community resilience.Method:We performed a qualitative analysis of the narratives in the national and local news reports during the aftermath to investigate occurrences of a blaming attitude and cognitive biases. Results: The results showed a considerable amount of sentences that were focused on blaming the forecasters, the Civil Protection System, and the local administration. Many narratives were affected by hindsight bias and described the events as simple and linear chain reactions. This led to counterfactual biases, assuming that a simple intervention on a single factor could have prevented the tragic outcome. Conclusion: We claim that the biased nature of the media narratives could affect the citizens\u2019 risk perception and their attitude towards the institutions, increasing their exposure to future flood-related threats. We propose the appropriate language would generate correct cognitive frames and, therefore, safer behaviou

Convolutional neural network search for long-duration transient gravitational waves from glitching pulsars

Machine learning can be a powerful tool to discover new signal types in astronomical data. We here apply it to search for long-duration transient gravitational waves triggered by pulsar glitches, which could yield physical insight into the mostly unknown depths of the pulsar. Current methods to search for such signals rely on matched filtering and a brute-force grid search over possible signal durations, which is sensitive but can become very computationally expensive. We develop a method to search for post-glitch signals on combining matched filtering with convolutional neural networks, which reaches similar sensitivities to the standard method at false-alarm probabilities relevant for practical searches, while being significantly faster. We specialize to the Vela glitch during the LIGO-Virgo O2 run, and set upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude from the data of the two LIGO detectors for both constant-amplitude and exponentially decaying signals.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures. Comments welcom

The Interaction of Tetryl, a Nitroaromatic Explosive, with Bacterial Reaction Centres

Tetryl, a nitroaromatic compound, was found to interact in two different measurable ways with bacterial reaction centre protein (BRC). The protein amplifies the reaction of tetryl occurring in the presence of detergent, producing a visible product with absorption peaks at 345 nm and 415 nm. BRC provides a location in the micelle with a rate 80-fold faster than in buffer with equal detergent concentration, and a location in the carotenoid binding site when carotenoid is absent with a rate 400-fold faster than in the bulk. The tetryl or its reaction product was also found to bind to the BRC near the bacteriochlorophyll dimer with micromolar level dissociation constant. The binding resulted in slowing down the charge recombination kinetics by modifying the light-induced structural changes. Up to 70% of the protein population can be made to recover with a rate constant of 0.01 s-1, about 100-fold slower than in the dark-adapted conformation. Both these effects can be combined to design a bimodal biosensor. The change in absorbance at 350 nm can be used to detect tetryl in the ppb (parts-per-billion) concentration range, and photocurrents across a monolayer of BRC on an electrode could be affected by the presence of tetryl. Last, this interaction could be the starting point to the design of bio-hybrid charge-storage devices or completely artificial photosynthetic devices

Tra scienza e mito. Le isole di Filostrato Maior (Im. II 17)

L'Imago II 17 di Filostrato Maior è costituita da un lungo periplo attorno ad alcune isole, che l’autore descrive più o meno dettagliatamente, intrecciando una complessa trama di informazioni mitologiche e scientifiche. l’analisi approfondita del testo, sotto il profilo contenutistico e linguistico, consente di mettere in luce il carattere letterario dell'ekphrasis filostratea e sottolineare alcuni significativi collegamenti tra le Imagines e altre opere del discusso corpus attribuito all’autore. Philostratus Maior’s Imago II 17 consists of a long journey around several islands. In describing them, Philostratus has drawn upon his own scientific and mythological knowledge. A careful analysis of this text, both from the point of view of language and contents, allows the A. to highlight the literary nature of Philostratus’ ekphrasis, and to emphasize meaningful connections between Imagines and other works of the controversial corpus attributed to the author

Creating opportunities to learn social skills at school using digital games

Acquiring skills for social and emotional well-being is important for inclusive societies and academic achievement. Studies have demonstrated the beneficial link between prosocial behaviours and improved results in curriculum topics. This paper describes a Prosocial Learning (PSL) process for creation and delivery of digital games for children (7-10 yrs) within educational systems that support learning of prosocial skills. The approach combines prosocial pedagogies with advanced ICT technologies and cloud delivery models to create attractive and exciting learning opportunities for children; produce novel digital game-based pedagogies and simplify deployment.Prosociality is a concept that refers to an individual’s propensity towards positive social behaviours. Individuals with prosocial skills are, for example, able to join in conversations, talk nicely, identifying feelings and emotions in themselves and others, identify someone needs help and ask for help. PSL classifies these skills in terms of Friendship, Feelings and Cooperation. By using interactive digital games supported by additional instructive and reflective activities, PSL allows children to learn social skills that can be generalised to real life situations in the classroom, playground and at home.PSL is implemented through a technology platform offering systematic pedagogical support for prosocial games developed by an ecosystem of teachers and games companies. Capabilities include multi-modal sensors to observe emotional affect, game interaction and decision-making. Information is acquired through standard protocols (e.g. xAPI) and evaluated by learning analytics algorithms to provide real-time feedback on player behaviours that are be used for in-game feedback and adaptation, and by teachers to shape follow-up activities. PSL is validated through short and longitudinal studies at European schools to gather evidence for effectiveness. This paper provides early evidence from short studies that will steer larger pan-European trials to test hypotheses, promote to policy makers and to increase adoption of game-based learning in school