Operation Prognostics and Operation Diagnostics—Technologies for Enhanced Operations and Controls

The Methodologies of Operation Prognostics and Operation Diagnostics have been developed by the authors over the last 8 to 10 years. Today, these methodologies have been combined in an integrated approach for advanced building commissioning

When All the World\u27s a Stage: The Impact of Events on News Coverage of South Africa, 1979-1985

A time series analysis was used to investigate: (1) whether a significant increase in news coverage of South Africa occurred during the critical years of 1979-1985 ; (2) whether the geographic origin and/or sociopolitical impact of events, rather than deaths per se, caused the increase; and (3) the manner in which the increase occurred. Results indicated that two symbolic events (i.e., a series of riots in twenty-one South African townships, internal to South Africa; and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Bishop Desmond Tutu, external to South Africa) cumulatively were responsible for a significant rise in news coverage of South Africa. The relationship of these symbolic sociopolitical events to the forces that shape short-term news headlines and long-term social change in general, including the imminent demise of apartheid in particular is discussed

Use of the Functional Movement Screening in Division III Collegiate Athletics

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) aims to expose movement limitations and asymmetries by screening an individual on seven different fundamental movement patterns. Limited research has been conducted using individual FMS test scores comparatively to composite scores. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a corrective exercise program on improving individual FMS scores for a collegiate basketball team. Thirteen healthy, male student athletes from an NCAA Division III men’s basketball team performed all seven FMS movements. The team was randomly divided into control and treatment groups. The control group followed their typical pre-practice dynamic warm-up four days per week for four weeks, while the treatment group performed a specific warm-up geared towards improving FMS for four days per week for four weeks. The athletes performed the complete FMS following the completion of the training program. The specific corrective exercise training program did not significantly change FMS movements

Movement Capability Changes in Collegiate Basketball Players Following a Corrective Exercise Program

While much data is available regarding Functional Movement Screen (FMS) scores in corrective exercise programs and injury prevention, limited data exists regarding comparisons between movement patterns in various sports. The purpose of this study was to review FMS scores to find any mobility and stability differences between several NCAA Division III sports. In this study, 83 healthy student-athletes, from four different sports teams, performed a battery of tests to measure physical capabilities prior to the beginning of their competitive season. All participating student-athletes performed the FMS, which is a tool used to gauge fundamental movement patterns including range of motion, stability, and balance, to measure movement asymmetries and limitations

Nonsupersymmetric brane vacua in stabilized compactifications

We derive the equations for the nonsupersymmetric vacua of D3-branes in the presence of nonperturbative moduli stabilization in type IIB flux compactifications, and solve and analyze them in the case of two particular 7-brane embeddings at the bottom of the warped deformed conifold. In the limit of large volume and long throat, we obtain vacua by imposing a constraint on the 7-brane embedding. These vacua fill out continuous spaces of higher dimension than the corresponding supersymmetric vacua, and have negative effective cosmological constant. Perturbative stability of these vacua is possible but not generic. Finally, we argue that anti-D3-branes at the tip of the conifold share the same vacua as D3-branes.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX. v2: references added, typo fixed. v3: version appearing in JHE

The Relevance of Organization Theory to the Field of Business and Information Systems Engineering

Information and communication systems (ICS) impact their organizational environment in significant ways; hence, the design, implementation, and use of ICS are inseparably linked to fundamental issues of organizational design and behavior. Current research in the field of business and information systems engineering (BISE), however, is primarily technology- or practice-oriented and concerned with the construction and validation of prototypes, whereas little attention is paid to theoretical insights into organizational phenomena and relationships. In this paper, we argue that paying more attention to organization theory would provide valuable guidance in addressing the close links between ICS on the one hand, and organizational systems on the other. To support our argument, we refer to selected theoretical perspectives and highlight their potential relevance to the BISE field

Glossinidae

One zebu bull of 365 kg live weight was treated along the back line with 36 mL of fipronil as a pour-on formulation. Long-lasting mortalities of Glossina palpalis gambiensis were recorded despite exposure to sunlight and regular rinsing with 50 L of water during the following 5 months. Significantly higher mortalities were still observed even 140, 170 and 190 days after treatment following their triple releases or triple feeding of caged tsetse on the treated bull. Mortalities of 70, 80 and 44 %, respectively, were recorded after 15 days of observation. This contrasted with the mortalities of control flies that were released in the presence of the untreated bull or fed in cages on the animal, amounting to 20 and twice 10 % after 170 and 190 days. The feeding successes of the released or caged flies were higher than 95 % and did not differ between control and experimental groups, indicating no repulsive or irritant effects of fipronil. The findings of this study are discussed, particularly in view of the potential of fipronil as an effective means for tsetse control

Behavioral and Neural Effects of Familiarization on Object-Background Associations

Associative memory is the ability to link together components of stimuli. Previous evidence suggests that prior familiarization with study items affects the nature of the association between stimuli. More specifically, novel stimuli are learned in a more context-dependent fashion than stimuli that have been encountered previously without the current context. In the current study, we first acquired behavioral data from 62 human participants to conceptually replicate this effect. Participants were instructed to memorize multiple objectscene pairs (study phase) and were then tested on their recognition memory for the objects (test phase). Importantly, 1 day prior, participants had been familiarized with half of the object stimuli. During the test phase, the objects were either matched to the same scene as during study (intact pair) or swapped with a different object’s scene (rearranged pair). Our results conceptually replicated the context-dependency effect by showing that breaking up a studied object-context pairing is more detrimental to object recognition performance for non-familiarized objects than for familiarized objects. Second, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether medial temporal lobe encoding-related activity patterns are reflective of this familiarity-related context effect. Data acquired from 25 human participants indicated a larger effect of familiarization on encoding-related hippocampal activity for objects presented within a scene context compared to objects presented alone. Our results showed that both retrieval-related accuracy patterns and hippocampal activation patterns were in line with a familiarizationmediated context-dependency effec

Hidden Subsidies and the Public Ownership of Sports Facilities: The Case of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara

Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California is an example of a private financing / public ownership arrangement. While the stadium’s construction resulted in no direct tax increases, this ownership arrangement allows the San Francisco 49ers to avoid many types of taxes on the income generated from Levi’s Stadium. We estimate the total tax savings to the 49ers at between $106 and$213 million over the first 20 years of Levi’s Stadium compared with a privately financed and owned option. We argue that tax savings inherent in private financing / public ownership arrangements represent indirect and hidden subsidies