Muslim Head Coverings

I researched female head coverings in the Muslim culture, to see how the veils affected society and society\u27s response to the covering

Broadcasting Convolutional Network for Visual Relational Reasoning

In this paper, we propose the Broadcasting Convolutional Network (BCN) that extracts key object features from the global field of an entire input image and recognizes their relationship with local features. BCN is a simple network module that collects effective spatial features, embeds location information and broadcasts them to the entire feature maps. We further introduce the Multi-Relational Network (multiRN) that improves the existing Relation Network (RN) by utilizing the BCN module. In pixel-based relation reasoning problems, with the help of BCN, multiRN extends the concept of `pairwise relations' in conventional RNs to `multiwise relations' by relating each object with multiple objects at once. This yields in O(n) complexity for n objects, which is a vast computational gain from RNs that take O(n^2). Through experiments, multiRN has achieved a state-of-the-art performance on CLEVR dataset, which proves the usability of BCN on relation reasoning problems.Comment: Accepted paper at ECCV 2018. 24 page

Barriers To Effective E-Business In Developing Countries

The Internet has changed the way many firms do business in the U.S. and throughout the world.  Practicing e-business in developing countries is particularly challenging for a number of reasons.  In this paper we present a taxonomy of barriers facing e-businesses pursuing markets in developing countries.  The major barriers center around culture, economic dimensions, infrastructure, and the political/regulatory environment.  We identify key components of each barrier type.  For example, cultural barriers include language, shopping habits, and use of credit, among others.  Country specific examples are presented with management implications and possible solutions

Re-Imagining Our Story: Creating a Virtual Summer Reading Program

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union County Library System (UCLS) opted to solely offer virtual programming for our popular Summer Reading Program. This article focuses on the background, planning, and implementation in creating and executing a fun and innovative summer experience for our community and patrons, including a gamification twist to incentivize our participants

Evolutionary temperature compensation of carbon fixation in marine phytoplankton

The efficiency of carbon sequestration by the biological pump could decline in the coming decades because respiration tends to increase more with temperature than photosynthesis. Despite these differences in the short-term temperature sensitivities of photosynthesis and respiration, it remains unknown whether the long-term impacts of global warming on metabolic rates of phytoplankton can be modulated by evolutionary adaptation. We found that respiration was consistently more temperature dependent than photosynthesis across 18 diverse marine phytoplankton, resulting in universal declines in the rate of carbon fixation with short-term increases in temperature. Long-term experimental evolution under high temperature reversed the short-term stimulation of metabolic rates, resulting in increased rates of carbon fixation. Our findings suggest that thermal adaptation may therefore have an ameliorating impact on the efficiency of phytoplankton as primary mediators of the biological carbon pump

Wave resistance minimisation in practical ship design

A practical and efficient system is described for ship hull form optimisation and its application for minimising wave resistance. Parametric hull form deformations are defined in a CAD system, specific for the case considered and related with flow aspects to be addressed. Surrogate-based global optimisation is applied for multi-objective problems, such as optimisation for a ship’s operational profile

Constructing Contemporary Nationhood in the Museums and Heritage Centres of Catalonia

Geographically Spain consists of a complex mosaic of cultural identities and regional aspirations for varying degrees of autonomy and independence. Following the end of violent conflict in the Basque country, Catalonia has emerged as the most vocal region pursuing independence from the central Spanish state. Within the Catalan separatist movement, cultural heritage sites and objects have been appropriated to play an intrinsic role in supporting political aims, with a variety of cultural institutions and state-sponsored monumentality playing an active part in the formation and dissemination of particular identity-based narratives. These ae centred around the themes of a separate and culturally distinct Catalan nation which has been subject to extended periods of oppression by the varying manifestations of the central Spanish State.  Recent developments have seen museums and other historic sites and places being appropriated and redesigned to play a more consciously active, overt and supportive role in the independence movement