Conducting Effective Presentations

{Excerpt} From interviews and our own observations, the following scenario is common: the speaker at a seminar shares about 30 slides, skipping over many. Time goes on…and on. Some participants lose interest; others become distracted; some even slip out. Finally, the sponsor says, “Time has run out, but maybe we can have one or two questions.” Yet it looked as though the speaker had just reached the heart of the matter and it was over. What happened? In most organizations, staff are busy and they vote withtheir feet. If they are bored or not actively engaged, they will find excuses to leave. Some will never return to presentations conducted by the same speaker. The good news is that guidelines for conducting effective presentations are simple and do not depend on the speaking ability of the person sharing the message

Analysis of CDC social control measures using an agent-based simulation of an influenza epidemic in a city

Background: the transmission of infectious disease amongst the human population is a complex process which requires advanced, often individual-based, models to capture the space-time details observed in reality.Methods: an Individual Space-Time Activity-based Model (ISTAM) was applied to simulate the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical control measures including: (1) refraining from social activities, (2) school closure and (3) household quarantine, for a hypothetical influenza outbreak in an urban area.Results: amongst the set of control measures tested, refraining from social activities with various compliance levels was relatively ineffective. Household quarantine was very effective, especially for the peak number of cases and total number of cases, with large differences between compliance levels. Household quarantine resulted in a decrease in the peak number of cases from more than 300 to around 158 for a 100% compliance level, a decrease of about 48.7%. The delay in the outbreak peak was about 3 to 17 days. The total number of cases decreased to a range of 3635-5403, that is, 63.7%-94.7% of the baseline value.When coupling control measures, household quarantine together with school closure was the most effective strategy. The resulting space-time distribution of infection in different classes of activity bundles (AB) suggests that the epidemic outbreak is strengthened amongst children and then spread to adults. By sensitivity analysis, this study demonstrated that earlier implementation of control measures leads to greater efficacy. Also, for infectious diseases with larger basic reproduction number, the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical measures was shown to be limited.Conclusions: simulated results showed that household quarantine was the most effective control measure, while school closure and household quarantine implemented together achieved the greatest benefit. Agent-based models should be applied in the future to evaluate the efficacy of control measures for a range of disease outbreaks in a range of settings given sufficient information about the given case and knowledge about the transmission processes at a fine scal

Fitting the bike to the chain: An analysis of transitions towards households integration of multi-modal cycling

This study explores the integration of cycling with public transport (Cycling-PT) from a household perspective. Varied household types were reflected in the individuals and families who participated in fourty-seven interviews and small group discussions in Nottingham and Leeds. Participants were recruited at railway stations, bike hubs and via activist and bicycle user groups and other gatekeeper organisations in the voluntary, local authority and education sectors between June 2016 and January 2017. Drawing on literature from the Activity Approach (AA), Mobility Biographies and structuration theory, an interview topic guide was used during individual interviews and small group discussions, supported by visual cue cards. Additional visual elicitation methods supported a second phase of discussions with individuals and families, the participants assembling 3D Styrofoam models of railway stations, using miniature Lego characters to recreate scenarios of journeys when they had combined Cycling-PT. Together, these methods provided insight into the variability of household travel behaviour over the life-course, mental models and reflexive processes. Interviews with eight family groups who took part with their children revealed how Cycling-PT had enabled the everyday activities of families through specialisation of roles for childcare and employment. Benefits to households included access to employment, particularly for people unable to drive. Time-savings over using buses to access rail journeys contrasted with more divided opinions on cost savings. Families integrated taking children to daycare, or school, with regular combined Cycling-PT commutes, carried by bicycle and train with their parents. Adolescent children travelling independently to visit relatives during school holidays. Childcare provision was influential in family travel decisions, collecting children at the end of the working day acting to constrain the combination of Cycling-PT. Parents valued secure storage for bicycles (and other mobility devices) at nurseries, schools, transport hubs and workplaces. Qualitative thematic analysis of interview transcripts using NVivo revealed beliefs and related to physical activity shared within households that had motivated the combination of cycling with PT. Participants associated improved mood with the integration of cycling with PT, the combined modes enabling the transition between work or study and household activities. Bicycle parking at PT hubs complemented carriage of bicycles on board trains to enable a full range of activities to be achieved. Workplace facilitation included flexible, or negotiated working arrangements, changing facilities, storage and showers for cyclists, salary-sacrifice bicycle purchase schemes and supportive colleagues. These findings have implications for policy, transport design, and offer directions for future research

The influence of CpG and UpA dinucleotide frequencies on RNA virus replication and characterization of the innate cellular pathways underlying virus attenuation and enhanced replication

Most RNA viruses infecting mammals and other vertebrates show profound suppression of CpG and UpA dinucleotide frequencies. To investigate this functionally, mutants of the picornavirus, echovirus 7 (E7), were constructed with altered CpG and UpA compositions in two 1.1–1.3 Kbase regions. Those with increased frequencies of CpG and UpA showed impaired replication kinetics and higher RNA/infectivity ratios compared with wild-type virus. Remarkably, mutants with CpGs and UpAs removed showed enhanced replication, larger plaques and rapidly outcompeted wild-type virus on co-infections. Luciferase-expressing E7 sub-genomic replicons with CpGs and UpAs removed from the reporter gene showed 100-fold greater luminescence. E7 and mutants were equivalently sensitive to exogenously added interferon-β, showed no evidence for differential recognition by ADAR1 or pattern recognition receptors RIG-I, MDA5 or PKR. However, kinase inhibitors roscovitine and C16 partially or entirely reversed the attenuated phenotype of high CpG and UpA mutants, potentially through inhibition of currently uncharacterized pattern recognition receptors that respond to RNA composition. Generating viruses with enhanced replication kinetics has applications in vaccine production and reporter gene construction. More fundamentally, the findings introduce a new evolutionary paradigm where dinucleotide composition of viral genomes is subjected to selection pressures independently of coding capacity and profoundly influences host–pathogen interactions

The Contrasting Soundscapes of Hull and London in David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

In this article I apply the concept of the urban soundscape as developed by Long and Collins (2012) in an analysis of the impact musicians from Hull had on the evolution of David Bowie’s seminal 1972 work The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I argue that the performance of Ziggy Stardust, both on record and on stage, is doubly coded in relation to place and space. The 'concept' of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust as a musical, a fictional story with songs performed on stage, and an accompanying album of recorded songs, initially appears to be heavily associated with London. The format of the concept – which the creator described as theatre, rather than a rock and roll show – is derived from Bowie’s experience growing up in London from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, a time of great change in the capital. I suggest that the Ziggy Stardust performance, and its significance, rests on the authenticity of the supporting musicians in the project, musicians from Hull, Yorkshire, with whom Bowie had been playing for more than two years before it was aired. I illustrate that Bowie and his support cast were subject to different cultural settings, and thus influenced by different soundscapes, and the relevant properties from each are compared here. I go on to provide some assessment of how the involvement of these Hull musicians in the Bowie project has impacted upon the city’s historical music culture, and on heritage issues and cultural production in that town. I conclude by noting that Hull has a thriving arts community and is UK Capital of Culture in 2017

Metaphysics and Race

This thesis examines the metaphysics of race. It begins by trying to find an interpretation of the claim that race is socially constructed which makes sense as a position within a substantive metaphysical debate. By identifying the different commitments and controversies in the debate, I argue that the best such interpretation is a constitutive one. I then consider Barnes’s (2020) discussion of the metaphysics of gender, in which she advocates two theses. The negative thesis holds that a successful metaphysics of gender need not line up with ordinary gender terms and beliefs. The positive thesis holds that the metaphysics of gender is concerned with explaining the various phenomena of gender. The expressions required in our ideology and posited categories and entities required in our ontology are those needed to satisfactorily explain gender. In applying this to race, I argue that there is no distinctive explanatory task for metaphysicians of race to engage in. There is no explanatory remainder left once the natural and social sciences have performed their work. The correct metaphysics of race, while concerned with explaining the phenomena of race, is not to be determined by metaphysicians. This is the modified positive thesis. The modified positive thesis fits neatly with the post-Quinean thought that science and metaphysics are continuous. In Chapter 3, I argue for deflationism regarding the actual metaphysics of race debate. There is an ontological consensus - an agreement over what, empirically, there is - between the participants. What they disagree over is what racial concepts (should) apply to. But, while interesting and useful, this isn’t a substantive metaphysical debate. The debate over how to explain race, on the other hand, is substantive. I discuss related issues, including the distinctions between pluralism, deflationism, and racial scepticism, and the presuppositions of the standard debate regarding natural kinds

Saltwater Sacraments and Backwoods Sins: Contemporary Atlantic Canadian Literature and the Rise of Literary Catholicism

In the 1990s, Canadian readers were offered a new literary trend: the Atlantic Canadian Catholic novel. In this dissertation, I examine works from six authors whose writing reflects the scope of this trend and I argue for a consideration of their collective impact on our social imaginary. The bulk of my argument is devoted to an examination of the Catholic religious content in the five novels and one memoir: David Adams Richards’ Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998); Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (1996); Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven (1996); Wayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion: A Memoir (1999); Patrick Kavanagh’s Gaff Topsails (1996); and Michael Crummey’s The Wreckage (2005). These novels are indicative of what is more broadly referred to as the contemporary “return of religion” in Western discourse and politics. But what exactly does this revitalized religious discourse tell us? It is my contention that the rise of the Catholic novel in Atlantic Canada signals shifts in what we consider as the “religious” and the “secular.” I offer an account of this shifting religious-secular dynamic in my introduction. While each of the works I study is unique, there are consistent theological constructs that are repeated through them all. I have called these consistencies a “theological aesthetic.” They include: firstly, the analogy of being—a specific linguistic pattern for considering the similarities and differences between God and humanity; secondly, the spiritual sense—a way of reading Scripture which allows for figures and events to take on significance that resonates beyond the literal element of the text; and thirdly, gathered time—a description of the way that eternity relates to temporal beings. These three aspects of the theological aesthetic offer insight into contemporary Western understandings of the relations between the secular (nature) and the religious (grace). I argue that instead of putting the emphasis on the extreme difference between nature and grace, as was done by the influential Protestant movements that underwrote the earlier Atlantic Canadian imaginary, the current shifts have allowed for a more broadly defined nature-grace continuum. To understand this shift we require a fuller distinction between what I call “Secular I” (as described in most earlier secularization theories) and “Secular II” (now sometimes referred to as the “post-secular”). In my final chapter, I offer an explanation of this shifting religious-secular dynamic through an historical overview of key texts in the Atlantic literary canon. I theorize the shift from a stable divide between the religious and the secular that was managed by a general Protestant ethos, to a more stringent privatization of religion. While many have naturalized the resulting secularism, I claim that this recent Catholic literary trend challenges our preconceived notions about what constitutes secular and religious contributions, and thus, frustrates any notion of purity on the side of the secular or the religious. Understood this way, the contemporary Catholic novel in Atlantic Canada, which could stereotypically be thought to express marginal concerns, reflects a post-secular innovation that represents a transnational critique of the Protestant structures that underpin our social imaginary

Catholic Integralism and Marian Receptivity in Wayne Johnston’s Newfoundland: Baltimore’s Mansion and the Catholic Imaginary

Wayne Johnston’s memoir is a political lament that cannot be understood unless readers engage with the family’s profound sense of religious loss. This literary act of mourning, voiced through Johnston’s family history, grieves the ruptured imaginary of Catholic integralism. To express the depth of this rift, Johnston constructs a philosophical impasse – a “grievous wound” – which operates as a symbolic locus of trauma originating from his father and son characters’ contending theological and political self-understandings. Arthur’s theo-political wound is inflicted by the deconstructive impact of the modern nation-state on cultures that maintain an intimate imaginative connection with the land. The land undergoes a topographical conversion from one set of imaginary correlates, Marian Newfoundland, to another, Canadian nationalism. Attending to the narrative structure, the critique of instrumental reason, and the overall “inculturation” of Catholicism in the Newfoundland imaginary helps demonstrate that theological themes pervade the entire texture of Johnston’s memoir

Effect of variations in load profile on power transformer cyclic ratings

Cyclic rating and demand side management (DSM) schemes are employed by electrical supply authorities to manage peak demand as an alternative to costly network upgrades. This project investigated the currently unknown impact of DSM altered load profiles on the cyclic ratings of power transformers. In response to electricity price increases, supply authorities are employing cyclic rating and DSM techniques to defer capital expenditure. A cyclic rating exploits transformer thermal inertia to permit loading above nameplate for parts of a 24 hour cycle, compensated for by loading below nameplate at other times such that insulation thermal limits are not exceeded. DSM aims to flatten load profiles commonly by transferring load from peak to off-peak times. Both techniques ensure that existing transformers can supply load peaks. Cyclic ratings achieve this by boosting capacity above demand while DSM reduces demand below capacity. In this way, the two techniques permit deferral of network upgrades. Since DSM alters the load profiles on which cyclic ratings are based, a relationship must exist between the two. The plant rating engineer must understand all such dependencies, hence the need for this project. Initially, thermal transformer models proposed by various researchers and AS 60076.7 for the purpose of predicting transformer oil and paper temperatures were studied. The AS 60076.7 models and one selected from the literature were then implemented in Matlab and compared to assess their suitability for use in the project and by plant rating engineers. The selected thermal model then became the basis of a cyclic rating calculator employed to automate the computation of cyclic ratings based on the AS 60076.7 specification. DSM techniques were researched to reveal the load shifting version as the method favoured by supply authorities and a simulator was constructed in Matlab to modify load profiles accordingly. 12 diverse Ergon Energy transformers were then selected along with a set of DSM modified load profiles as inputs to the cyclic rating calculator which computed 600 cyclic ratings for analysis. The final phase of the project then involved analysis of the ratings to determine and quantify the effect of DSM caused load profile changes on cyclic ratings. It was determined that the cyclic ratings of power transformers are negatively affected by load shifting DSM. That is, attening of load profiles causes reduction in cyclic ratings. The amount by which cyclic ratings change given a change in load profile varies according to several factors including: location, size and cooling mode of the transformer. Regression models for simple but approximate prediction of cyclic rating changes were developed. Generalised expressions for predicting the change in cyclic rating with change in peak load or load factor are: ΔCRFd = 0:45 x ΔPLd ΔCRFd = 0:37 x ΔLFi where: ΔCRFd is the percentage decrease in CRF; ΔPLd is the percentage decrease in peak load; & ΔLFi is the percentage increase in load factor. In addition to achievement of the main project objective - determination of the impact on cyclic ratings of load profile changes - a range of other outcomes from the project are useful. These include: a thorough investigation of the techniques and theory involved in transformer thermal modelling, insulation ageing, cyclic rating calculation and DSM; a program which automatically calculates cyclic ratings for power transformers; and a load shifting DSM simulation program, useful for generating altered load profiles for use with the cyclic rating calculator. This collection of knowledge and programs will be of particular use to Ergon Energy, the project sponsor. The impact of load shifting DSM on cyclic ratings, as identified in this dissertation, has the potential to negatively influence factors such as: peak capacity; transformer lifespan and maintenance; planning and budgeting for network augmentation; reduction of capital expenditure; and the valuation of DSM programs. The results and outcomes of this project have the potential to assist plant rating engineers in their understanding and application of cyclic ratings in the context of changing load profiles such that they may anticipate and therefore prevent many of the negative side-effects identified

Relationships between climate and winter cereal grain quality in Finland and their potential for forecasting

Many studies have demonstrated the effects of climate on cereal yield, but there has been little work carried out examining the relationships between climate and cereal grain quality on a national scale. In this study national mean hectolitre weight for both rye and winter wheat in Finland was modelled using monthly gridded accumulated snow depth, precipitation rate, solar radiation and temperature over the period 1971 to 2001. Variables with significant relationships in correlation analysis both before and after difference detrending were further investigated using forward stepwise regression. For rye, March snow depth, and June and July solar radiation accounted for 66% of the year-to-year variance in hectolitre weight, and for winter wheat January snow depth, June solar radiation and August temperature accounted for 62% of the interannual variance in hectolitre weight. Further analysis of national variety trials and weather station data was used to support proposed biological mechanisms. Finally a cross validation technique was used to test forecast models with those variables available by early July by making predictions of above or below the mean hectolitre weight. Analysis of the contingency tables for these predictions indicated that national hectolitre weight forecasts are feasible for both cereals in advance of harvest