The development of a set of criteria for the evaluation of elementary choral material.

Thesis (M.M.E.)--Boston Universit

Exploring hidden narratives: Conscript graffiti at the former military base of Kummersdorf

This article explores the cultural significance and interpretative potential of graffiti left by Soviet conscripts at Kummersdorf, a former military base in the German federal state of Brandenburg. The graffiti is framed as war art and its typology, distribution and content is studied in detail. In this way opportunities for further research are highlighted, as well as the potential for the graffiti to contribute to interpretative and conservation strategies. We demonstrate how the graffiti embodies multi-level interpretative narratives which can help to reveal hidden aspects of Soviet conscript life and cultural practices whilst alluding to global events and Soviet and Russian military policy. More generally, the article aims to promote the potential of graffiti and other forms of what is traditionally considered vandalism to contribute to the cultural significance and interpretation of heritage sites

Design and evaluation of a robust dynamic neurocontroller for a multivariable aircraft control problem

The design of a dynamic neurocontroller with good robustness properties is presented for a multivariable aircraft control problem. The internal dynamics of the neurocontroller are synthesized by a state estimator feedback loop. The neurocontrol is generated by a multilayer feedforward neural network which is trained through backpropagation to minimize an objective function that is a weighted sum of tracking errors, and control input commands and rates. The neurocontroller exhibits good robustness through stability margins in phase and vehicle output gains. By maintaining performance and stability in the presence of sensor failures in the error loops, the structure of the neurocontroller is also consistent with the classical approach of flight control design

Climate Ready Estuaries - COAST in Action: 2012 Projects from Maine and New Hampshire

In summer 2011 the US EPA’s Climate Ready Estuaries program awarded funds to the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership (CBEP) in Portland, Maine, and the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership (PREP) in coastal New Hampshire, to further develop and use COAST (COastal Adaptation to Sea level rise Tool) in their sea level rise adaptation planning processes. The New England Environmental Finance Center worked with municipal staff, elected officials, and other stakeholders to select specific locations, vulnerable assets, and adaptation actions to model using COAST. The EFC then collected the appropriate base data layers, ran the COAST simulations, and provided visual, numeric, and presentation-based products in support of the planning processes underway in both locations. These products helped galvanize support for the adaptation planning efforts. Through facilitated meetings they also led to stakeholders identifying specific action steps and begin to determine how to implement them

Multigenerational Adult Development Research Project In An Online Graduate Course In Adult Learning

This paper describes research in two arenas. First is a research project using the life course dynamics perspective as a lens to investigate the patterns and timing of life events in multiple generations within extended family. Second is an experiment in the scholarship of teaching to pilot test this research project in an online graduate course in adult development and learning. The course is D505 Adult Learning through the Lifespan. The course description reads: Review of selected adult education literature describing the adult lifespan as it relates to participation in learning projects and adult education programming. Identify how social and cultural forces influence the engagement of adults in the learning process

A Novel Scoring Based Distributed Protein Docking Application to Improve Enrichment

Molecular docking is a computational technique which predicts the binding energy and the preferred binding mode of a ligand to a protein target. Virtual screening is a tool which uses docking to investigate large chemical libraries to identify ligands that bind favorably to a protein target. We have developed a novel scoring based distributed protein docking application to improve enrichment in virtual screening. The application addresses the issue of time and cost of screening in contrast to conventional systematic parallel virtual screening methods in two ways. Firstly, it automates the process of creating and launching multiple independent dockings on a high performance computing cluster. Secondly, it uses a N˙ aive Bayes scoring function to calculate binding energy of un-docked ligands to identify and preferentially dock (Autodock predicted) better binders. The application was tested on four proteins using a library of 10,573 ligands. In all the experiments, (i). 200 of the 1000 best binders are identified after docking only 14% of the chemical library, (ii). 9 or 10 best-binders are identified after docking only 19% of the chemical library, and (iii). no significant enrichment is observed after docking 70% of the chemical library. The results show significant increase in enrichment of potential drug leads in early rounds of virtual screening

A Method for Reducing the Severity of Epidemics by Allocating Vaccines According to Centrality

One long-standing question in epidemiological research is how best to allocate limited amounts of vaccine or similar preventative measures in order to minimize the severity of an epidemic. Much of the literature on the problem of vaccine allocation has focused on influenza epidemics and used mathematical models of epidemic spread to determine the effectiveness of proposed methods. Our work applies computational models of epidemics to the problem of geographically allocating a limited number of vaccines within several Texas counties. We developed a graph-based, stochastic model for epidemics that is based on the SEIR model, and tested vaccine allocation methods based on multiple centrality measures. This approach provides an alternative method for addressing the vaccine allocation problem, which can be combined with more conventional approaches to yield more effective epidemic suppression strategies. We found that allocation methods based on in-degree and inverse betweenness centralities tended to be the most effective at containing epidemics.Comment: 10 pages, accepted to ACM BCB 201

EFFECTS OF METEOROLOGIC EVENTS ON WAVE CLIMATE AND CURRENT REGIME IN A SHALLOW, MICROTIDAL BAY

Along coastal Louisiana and within the shallow microtidal Barataria Bay estuary, meteorological events can play a primary role in influencing wave climate and circulation patterns. Understanding the effects of hurricanes and smaller tropical storms on hydrodynamic processes is important for constraining and predicting hydrodynamic variation in Barataria Bay, which, largely due to impacts from wave energy, is currently experiencing rapid wetland loss and is a major focus of coastal restoration efforts. Two bottom-mounted upward-facing Acoustic Current Doppler Profilers and wave, temperature, and depth recorders were installed in the lower portions of Barataria Bay to measure the wave climate and three-dimensional current velocities. These data were used to constrain wave action and current velocity responding to the passage of meteorological events in the fall of 2020 and summer of 2021. Fetch distance, water depth, and local wind speed were used as variables in a linear wave theory model that predicts significant wave height. Model results indicate that variation in fetch contributes relatively more to the overprediction of wave heights during storms compared to depth variation, which results in nearly negligible impacts on wave height prediction within Barataria Bay. In the quiescent periods between events, wave heights and propagation directions were much less predictable, as wind direction had a wider range and magnitude decreased substantially. Analyses of depth-averaged velocities suggests diurnal constituents dominate periodicity. Storms that made landfall to the west of the bay resulted in enhanced subtidal current magnitude during pre-and post-landfall periods while the recorded storm that made landfall to the east of the bay showed much less subtidal current response. The results shed light on the impacts of extreme events on circulation and wave climate in Barataria Bay, with implications for suspended sediment transport in a degradational coastal system

A real-time simulator of a turbofan engine

A real-time digital simulator of a Pratt and Whitney F100 engine has been developed for real-time code verification and for actuator diagnosis during full-scale engine testing. This self-contained unit can operate in an open-loop stand-alone mode or as part of closed-loop control system. It can also be used for control system design and development. Tests conducted in conjunction with the NASA Advanced Detection, Isolation, and Accommodation program show that the simulator is a valuable tool for real-time code verification and as a real-time actuator simulator for actuator fault diagnosis. Although currently a small perturbation model, advances in microprocessor hardware should allow the simulator to evolve into a real-time, full-envelope, full engine simulation