89,129 research outputs found
Land Law – The fight against gazumping
Professor M.P. Thompson (University of Leicester) considers the background and needs for the government review of conveyancing procedures in England and Wales which has focussed on stamping out the practice of gazumping. Note published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London
Women-led Fisheries Management: A Case Study From Bangladesh
This is a case study of a women-led fishery in Bangladesh. Although women constitute 50% of the total population of Asia (Southern)-Bangladesh; only 18% are economically involved inthe total labor force. They are involved in diversified work within their homesteads. However, during times offamily needs and economic crisis, women are involved in non-traditional jobs. In the fisheries sector, Muslimwomen are traditionally not involved in fishing but they are involved in fish drying and salting. In the Hindudominated areas such as Goakhola-Hatiara, women are involved in fish catch as well as the collection of otheraquatic resources as one of their livelihood strategies. Women and subsistence fishers are taking the lead inmanaging a common capture fishery resource in Goakhola-Hatiara with the support from an NGO for perhapsthe first time in Bangladesh. However, the role of women in the Beel Management Committee is not well defined.Under the leadership of women the socio-economic conditions have changed and the social capital has increased
A modified R1 X R1 method for helioseismic rotation inversions
We present an efficient method for two dimensional inversions for the solar
rotation rate using the Subtractive Optimally Localized Averages (SOLA) method
and a modification of the R1 X R1 technique proposed by Sekii (1993). The SOLA
method is based on explicit construction of averaging kernels similar to the
Backus-Gilbert method. The versatility and reliability of the SOLA method in
reproducing a target form for the averaging kernel, in combination with the
idea of the R1 X R1 decomposition, results in a computationally very efficient
inversion algorithm. This is particularly important for full 2-D inversions of
helioseismic data in which the number of modes runs into at least tens of
thousands.Comment: 12 pages, Plain TeX + epsf.tex + mn.te
Understanding livelihoods dependent on inland fisheries in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia: final technical report
Inland fisheries, Wetlands, Livelihoods
Asymptotic Eigenstructures
The behavior of the closed loop eigenstructure of a linear system with output feedback is analyzed as a single parameter multiplying the feedback gain is varied. An algorithm is presented that computes the asymptotically infinite eigenstructure, and it is shown how a system with high gain, feedback decouples into single input, single output systems. Then a synthesis algorithm is presented which uses full state feedback to achieve a desired asymptotic eigenstructure
Women-led fisheries management - a case study from Bangladesh
Role of women, Fisheries, Bangladesh,
A Personalized System for Conversational Recommendations
Searching for and making decisions about information is becoming increasingly
difficult as the amount of information and number of choices increases.
Recommendation systems help users find items of interest of a particular type,
such as movies or restaurants, but are still somewhat awkward to use. Our
solution is to take advantage of the complementary strengths of personalized
recommendation systems and dialogue systems, creating personalized aides. We
present a system -- the Adaptive Place Advisor -- that treats item selection as
an interactive, conversational process, with the program inquiring about item
attributes and the user responding. Individual, long-term user preferences are
unobtrusively obtained in the course of normal recommendation dialogues and
used to direct future conversations with the same user. We present a novel user
model that influences both item search and the questions asked during a
conversation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system in significantly
reducing the time and number of interactions required to find a satisfactory
item, as compared to a control group of users interacting with a non-adaptive
version of the system
Searching for Globally Optimal Functional Forms for Inter-Atomic Potentials Using Parallel Tempering and Genetic Programming
We develop a Genetic Programming-based methodology that enables discovery of
novel functional forms for classical inter-atomic force-fields, used in
molecular dynamics simulations. Unlike previous efforts in the field, that fit
only the parameters to the fixed functional forms, we instead use a novel
algorithm to search the space of many possible functional forms. While a
follow-on practical procedure will use experimental and {\it ab inito} data to
find an optimal functional form for a forcefield, we first validate the
approach using a manufactured solution. This validation has the advantage of a
well-defined metric of success. We manufactured a training set of atomic
coordinate data with an associated set of global energies using the well-known
Lennard-Jones inter-atomic potential. We performed an automatic functional form
fitting procedure starting with a population of random functions, using a
genetic programming functional formulation, and a parallel tempering
Metropolis-based optimization algorithm. Our massively-parallel method
independently discovered the Lennard-Jones function after searching for several
hours on 100 processors and covering a miniscule portion of the configuration
space. We find that the method is suitable for unsupervised discovery of
functional forms for inter-atomic potentials/force-fields. We also find that
our parallel tempering Metropolis-based approach significantly improves the
optimization convergence time, and takes good advantage of the parallel cluster
architecture
Hybrid operator models for digitally implemented control systems
A method of analysis for digitally implemented (hybrid) control systems based on conic sector concepts from functional analysis was established. Data sampling is addressed
Flow of evaporating, gravity-driven thin liquid films over topography
The effect of topography on the free surface and solvent concentration profiles of an evaporating thin film of liquid flowing down an inclined plane is considered. The liquid is assumed to be composed of a resin dissolved in a volatile solvent with the associated solvent concentration equation derived on the basis of the well-mixed approximation. The dynamics of the film is formulated as a lubrication approximation and the effect of a composition-dependent viscosity is included in the model. The resulting time-dependent, nonlinear, coupled set of governing equations is solved using a full approximation storage multigrid method.
The approach is first validated against a closed-form analytical solution for the case of a gravity-driven, evaporating thin film flowing down a flat substrate. Analysis of the results for a range of topography shapes reveal that although a full-width, spanwise topography such as a step-up or a step-down does not affect the composition of the film, the same is no longer true for the case of localized topography, such as a peak or a trough, for which clear nonuniformities of the solvent concentration profile can be observed in the wake of the topography
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