Processing (Post)humanism, Mediating Desire: Technology in the Works of Three Border Playwrights

New electronic technology, such as personal video cameras, videotape players, and the internet, has increasingly sparked interest from Northern Mexican border authors across genres. In Juan Ríos’s Generación Atari, Francisco J. López´s Cibernauta: cómo vivir atrapado en la red, and Bárbara Colio’s Teoría y práctica de la muerte de una cucaracha (sin dolor) and La habitación, technological innovations play a key role in the development of the central emotional conflicts. The four dramatic works relate new technology to an increased social openness regarding more diverse expressions of sexuality, yet they also portray existing hierarchies, fraught relationships, and tragic events that signal the limits and interruptions involved in the technological mediation of desire. Rather than any wholesale condemnation or celebration of technology, these works pose human-machine relations as an open question to be shared with and pondered by the audience

Classification of Southern Ocean krill and icefish echoes using random forests

Acknowledgements The authors thank the crews, fishers, and scientists who conducted the various surveys from which data were obtained. This work was supported by the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Additional logistical support provided by The South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute, with thanks to Paul Brickle. PF receives funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (TheMarine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. SF is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, and data were provided from the British Antarctic Survey Ecosystems Long-term Monitoring and Surveys programme as part of the BAS Polar Science for Planet Earth Programme. The authors also thank the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

PolyFS Visualizer

One of the most important operating system topics, file systems, control how we store and access data and form a key point in a computer scientists understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a computer. However, file systems, with their abstract concepts and lack of concrete learning aids, is a confusing subjects for students. Historically at Cal Poly, the CPE 453 Introduction to Operating Systems has been on of the most failed classes in the computing majors, leading to the need for better teaching and learning tools. Tools allowing students to gain concrete examples of abstract concepts could be used to better prepare students for industry. The PolyFS Visualizer is a block level file system visualization service built for the PolyFS and TinyFS file systems design specifications currently used by some of professors teaching CPE 453. The service allows students to easily view the blocks of their file system and see metadata, the blocks binary content and the interlinked structure. Students can either compile their file system code with a provided block emulation library to build their disk on a remote server and make use of a visualization website or place the file mounted as their file system directly into the visualization service to view it locally. This allows students to easily view, debug and explore their implementation of a file system to understand how different design decisions affect its operation. The implementation includes three main components: a disk emulation library in C for compilation with students code, a node JS back-end to handle students file systems and block operations and a read only visualization service. We have conducted two surveys of students in order to determine the usefulness of the PolyFS Visualizer. Students responded that the use of the PolyFS visualizer helps with the PolyFS file system design project and has several ideas for future features and expansions

Assessing consistency of fish survey data : uncertainties in the estimation of mackerel icefish (Champsocephalus gunnari) abundance at South Georgia

Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the crews, fishermen and scientists who conducted the various surveys from which data were obtained, and Mark Belchier and Simeon Hill for their contributions. This work was supported by the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Additional logistical support provided by The South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute with thanks to Paul Brickle. Thanks to Stephen Smith of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) for help in constructing bootstrap confidence limits. Paul Fernandes receives funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. We also wish to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in Chinese Fast Food Sector: A Proposal for CFFRSERV Scale

This study investigates customer’s perception of Chinese fast food restaurant service quality and its relationship with customer satisfaction. Employing modified DINESERV scale, the study uses both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Qualitative data collection consisted of face-to-face interviews and group discussion. A questionnaire was developed using three sources: interview responses of the customers, the restaurant’s survey and the literature. A total of 205 completed questionnaires were used in the analysis. The new measurement scale, Chinese Fast Food Restaurants Service Quality Scale (CFFRSERV), contained 28 items across six dimensions: assurance and empathy, food, cleanliness, responsiveness, reliability and tangibles. The findings from the study revealed that service quality variables have positive influence on customer satisfaction except reliability dimension. The findings provided a useful tool for service quality improvement in Chinese fast food restaurants. Validating the scale in other restaurants in various cities in China is an area for further research

Key issues in rural health: perspectives of health service providers in Queensland

The Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health (CRRAH) held interactive research workshops in eight towns in Southern Queensland. The purpose of the workshops was to determine what health providers considered were major issues affecting their service and for these results to inform future research strategy of CRRAH. Over 150 organisations identified as either providing health services or having a significant interest in health provision in one or more of the targeted towns were invited to attend. The workshops used the nominal group technique to identify what the participants considered were key health issues in the geographical area in which they worked. These issues were then prioritised by the participants. Thematic analysis of the issues generated a ranking of themes by importance. Results were compared with a similar exercise undertaken in 2003. Participants from organisation directly involved with health care were complemented at the workshops by representatives from local government, the police service and church groups. A total of 85 participants representing 47 services and 41 different organisations attended the eight workshops. Issues generated by the participants were pooled into seventeen themes. Workforce issues were by far the major concern of health providers. Recruitment and retention of health workers were a major concern. The other four highest ranked themes across all workshops were mental health, access to health services, perceptions and expectations of consumers of health services and interagency cooperation. Aged care was an additional theme that generated a lot of concern at several of the workshops. The workshops provided important information to CRRAH for developing research strategy. Additionally, several new alliances among health providers were developed which will support sharing of information and resources. The workshops enabled rural and remote organisations to meet and identify the key health issues and supported research planning. Much need alliances among health providers were forged and collaborative research avenues are being explored. The workshop forum is an excellent means of information exchange

Your Guess is as Good as Mine: Finding Your Way on Board a Cruise Ship

Wayfinding on board a large cruise ship might be mistakenly thought to be easy and straightforward, and this may well account for the absence of literature on this topic. This paper will address this gap by exploring and exposing the influences that shape our everyday practices while cruising, itself a moving experience, carrying us by consent across the seas to distant shores. The need to address on-site experiences is not as Pearce (2011) points out, always fully investigated in post-holiday satisfaction surveys, and so this exploration of how passengers react and respond to their cruise ship surroundings exposes the scale, and sometimes overwhelming enormity, of some of these vessels now selling a mass tourism product

A Geo-Statistical Investigation of Agricultural and Infrastructural Risk Factors Associated With Primary Verotoxigenic E. Coli (VTEC) Infection in the Republic of Ireland, 2008–2013

Ireland reports the highest incidence of verotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VTEC) infection in Europe. This study investigated potential risk factors for confirmed sporadic and outbreak primary VTEC infections during 2008-2013. Overall, 989 VTEC infections including 521 serogroup O157 and 233 serogroup O26 were geo-referenced to 931 of 18488 census enumeration areas. The geographical distribution of human population, livestock, unregulated groundwater sources, domestic wastewater treatment systems (DWWTS) and a deprivation index were examined relative to notification of VTEC events in 524 of 6242 rural areas. Multivariate modelling identified three spatially derived variables associated with VTEC notification: private well usage (odds ratio (OR) 6.896, p \u3c0.001), cattle density (OR 1.002, p \u3c0.001) and DWWTS density (OR 0.978, p = 0.002). Private well usage (OR 18.727, p \u3c0.001) and cattle density (OR 1.001, p = 0.007) were both associated with VTEC O157 infection, while DWWTS density (OR 0.987, p = 0.028) was significant within the VTEC O26 model. Findings indicate that VTEC infection in the Republic of Ireland is particularly associated with rural areas, which are associated with a ubiquity of pathogen sources (cattle) and pathways (unregulated groundwater supplies)

Synchronic and Diachronic Typology: The Case of Ejective Voicing

Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Historical Issues in Sociolinguistics/Social Issues in Historical Linguistics (1995