1,777 research outputs found
Tess as the archetype of the earth goddess in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Chapter I sees Thomas Hardy's novels, especially Tess of the D’Urbervilles, as tragedies which lie outside the mainstream of the literary thought of his century. The rise of the English Novel was largely influenced by John Locke's philosophy of free will and by his concept of "tabula rasa." Hardy has approached the problem of man's development from a different point of view. Through Darwin's theory of evolution it became evident that man had a genetic inheritance which preceeded the later manifestations of his free will. This genetic potential has the ingredients of a tragic development, because it has many of the implications of the classical concept of Divine Providence. This view led again to the recognition of archetypal patterns which were preserved in mythology and in classical literature. Hardy used these archetypal images again, not according to the classical concept of tragedy, but according to a linear development where time governs the theme and structure of the novel. We will see that time, as Hardy understood it, has archetypal significance as well. We recognize this when we define the meaning of the archetype and its genealogy
In a green tree
The poems of this thesis, although not in chronological order, make evident two distinct periods of development. The earlier poems are characterized by the short line and a freedom from strict regularity of stanza length, rhyme scheme and metric pattern. A larger group of poems represent the period during which the poet attempts to formalize her verse by imposing various disciplines on her writing style and, at the same time, on the idea of the poem. The poetry in both periods has as its primary objective the expression of ideas and observations with clarity. There are several poems which comment on the human condition and others which are descriptive. This thesis has no unifying theme. The title was derived from the poem which represents, to the poet, a major effort and accomplishment made during the two years of writing represented
Solving the Uncapacitated Single Allocation p-Hub Median Problem on GPU
A parallel genetic algorithm (GA) implemented on GPU clusters is proposed to
solve the Uncapacitated Single Allocation p-Hub Median problem. The GA uses
binary and integer encoding and genetic operators adapted to this problem. Our
GA is improved by generated initial solution with hubs located at middle nodes.
The obtained experimental results are compared with the best known solutions on
all benchmarks on instances up to 1000 nodes. Furthermore, we solve our own
randomly generated instances up to 6000 nodes. Our approach outperforms most
well-known heuristics in terms of solution quality and time execution and it
allows hitherto unsolved problems to be solved
The effects of hypobaric hypoxia on aspects of oxygen transport and utilization in mice with an inherited tolerance for hypoxic exercise
The effects of chronic hypoxia on properties of oxygen supply and demand were
investigated in mice found to have inherited differences in hypoxic exercise tolerance
(43). Previous results demonstrated that two major loci and an unknown number of
modifying genes were associated with the differences in hypoxic exercise performance
following 8 weeks exposure to hypobaric hypoxia in two inbred strains of mice,
BALB/cByJ (C) and C57BL/6J (B6), and their F1 hybrid (43). The three strains had
similar capacities for hypoxic exercise following exposure to normoxia. After 8 weeks of
hypoxic exposure, C mice showed little improvement in hypoxic exercise performance
while B6 mice had a significant improvement in fatigue resistance compared to normoxic
mice. Acclimated F1 mice, however, had a hypoxic exercise tolerance that far exceeded
that of either of the two parental strains. In the present study, all of the mouse strains
responded to hypoxia by elevating the hematocrit, hemoglobin, and BPG concentrations;
although, hypoxia-intolerant C mice had lower hematocrit and hemoglobin
concentrations following acclimation than both B6 and F1 mice. Mitochondrial densities
and distributions, as well as COX activities did not differ among strains or treatments,
suggesting that the muscles within the three strains have comparable oxygen demands.
F1 mice did, however, have very low concentrations of BPG relative to the other two
strains, and reduced concentrations of myoglobin in both skeletal and cardiac muscle
following hypoxic exposure. This suggests that the superior exercise performance of the
F1 mice may result from a relatively higher rate of oxygen supply to the muscles, such
that high concentrations of BPG and myoglobin are not required to keep up with oxygen
demand
Negative Attitudes of Law Students: A Replication of the Alienation and Dissatisfaction Factors
This book presents some recent systems engineering and mathematical tools for health care along with their real-world applications by health care practitioners and engineers. Advanced approaches, tools, and algorithms used in operating room scheduling and patient flow are covered. State-of-the-art results from applications of data mining, business process modeling, and simulation in healthcare, together with optimization methods, form the core of the volume. Systems Analysis Tools for Better Health Care Delivery illustrates the increased need of partnership between engineers and health care professionals. This book will benefit researchers and practitioners in health care delivery institutions, staff members and professionals of specialized hospital units, and lecturers and graduate students in engineering, applied mathematics, business administration and health care.
Managing facility disruption in hub-and-spoke networks: formulations and efficient solution methods
Hub disruption result in substantially higher transportation cost and customer dissatisfaction. In this study, first a mathematical model to design hub-and-spoke networks under hub failure is presented. For a fast and inexpensive recovery, the proposed model constructs networks in which every single demand point will have a backup hub to be served from in case of disruption. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer quadratic program in a way that could be linearized without significantly increasing the number of variables. To further ease the model’ computational burden, indicator constraints are employed in the linearized model. The resulting formulation produced optimal solutions for small and some medium size instances. To tackle large problems, three efficient particle swarm optimisation-based metaheuristics which incorporate efficient solution representation, short-term memory and special crossover operator are proposed. We present the results for two scenarios relating to high and low probabilities of hub failures and provide managerial insight. The computational results, using problem instances with various sizes taken from CAB and TR datasets, confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed problem formulation and our new solution techniques
Pain outcomes in patients with bone metastases from advanced cancer: assessment and management with bone-targeting agents
Bone metastases in advanced cancer frequently cause painful complications that impair patient physical activity and negatively affect quality of life. Pain is often underreported and poorly managed in these patients. The most commonly used pain assessment instruments are visual analogue scales, a single-item measure, and the Brief Pain Inventory Questionnaire-Short Form. The World Health Organization analgesic ladder and the Analgesic Quantification Algorithm are used to evaluate analgesic use. Bone-targeting agents, such as denosumab or bisphosphonates, prevent skeletal complications (i.e., radiation to bone, pathologic fractures, surgery to bone, and spinal cord compression) and can also improve pain outcomes in patients with metastatic bone disease. We have reviewed pain outcomes and analgesic use and reported pain data from an integrated analysis of randomized controlled studies of denosumab versus the bisphosphonate zoledronic acid (ZA) in patients with bone metastases from advanced solid tumors. Intravenous bisphosphonates improved pain outcomes in patients with bone metastases from solid tumors. Compared with ZA, denosumab further prevented pain worsening and delayed the need for treatment with strong opioids. In patients with no or mild pain at baseline, denosumab reduced the risk of increasing pain severity and delayed pain worsening along with the time to increased pain interference compared with ZA, suggesting that use of denosumab (with appropriate calcium and vitamin D supplementation) before patients develop bone pain may improve outcomes. These data also support the use of validated pain assessments to optimize treatment and reduce the burden of pain associated with metastatic bone disease
Lessons from building an automated pre-departure sequencer for airports
Commercial airports are under increasing pressure to comply with the Eurocontrol collaborative decision making (CDM) initiative, to ensure that information is passed between stakeholders, integrate automated decision support or make predictions. These systems can also aid effective operations beyond the airport by communicating scheduling decisions to other relevant parties, such as Eurocontrol, for passing on to downstream airports and enabling overall airspace improvements. One of the major CDM components is aimed at producing the target take-off times and target startup-approval times, i.e. scheduling when the aircraft should push back from the gates and start their engines and when they will take off. For medium-sized airports, a common choice for this is a “pre-departure sequencer” (PDS). In this paper, we describe the design and requirements challenges which arose during our development of a PDS system for medium sized international airports. Firstly, the scheduling problem is highly dynamic and event driven. Secondly, it is important to end-users that the system be predictable and, as far as possible, transparent in its operation, with decisions that can be explained. Thirdly, users can override decisions, and this information has to be taken into account. Finally, it is important that the system is as fair as possible for all users of the airport, and the interpretation of this is considered here. Together, these factors have influenced the design of the PDS system which has been built to work within an existing large system which is being used at many airport
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A high-resolution map of human evolutionary constraint using 29 mammals.
The comparison of related genomes has emerged as a powerful lens for genome interpretation. Here we report the sequencing and comparative analysis of 29 eutherian genomes. We confirm that at least 5.5% of the human genome has undergone purifying selection, and locate constrained elements covering ∼4.2% of the genome. We use evolutionary signatures and comparisons with experimental data sets to suggest candidate functions for ∼60% of constrained bases. These elements reveal a small number of new coding exons, candidate stop codon readthrough events and over 10,000 regions of overlapping synonymous constraint within protein-coding exons. We find 220 candidate RNA structural families, and nearly a million elements overlapping potential promoter, enhancer and insulator regions. We report specific amino acid residues that have undergone positive selection, 280,000 non-coding elements exapted from mobile elements and more than 1,000 primate- and human-accelerated elements. Overlap with disease-associated variants indicates that our findings will be relevant for studies of human biology, health and disease
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