Packaging The Great Plains The Role Of The Visual Arts

To consider the influence of Europe upon the visual arts of the Great Plains is to engender not only a new body of information but also some complex methodological questions of concern not only to the specialist but to the student of the region more generally. How does a regional perspective focus one\u27s investigation? How does influence work within a culture and how, specifically, that of Europe upon American and western culture? Finally, how do the visual arts function to shed light on these broader questions? It is the last of these questions that I will address here, not as an expert on the Great Plains, for my experience as a student of regionalism as a phenomenon, of European influence· on American culture, and of art history as a disciplinary approach, has lain elsewhere.1 I am convinced, however, that the problems of method and approach that the historian of the art of the Great Plains faces are part of a larger picture, and thus· we will move from questions of method toward their application to the Great Plains in particular. THE REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE Our premises need to be clear at the outset. The visual art of the Great Plains should not be considered as an inert body of disconnected pieces of information about the region, nor are pictures a series of windows, passive illustrations, or reflections of the reality of the region. Works of art-indeed, all facts and artifacts- come to us already packaged by our questions and framed by our perspectives. Charts of rainfall in the Great Plains presume that there is a question about the influence of precipitation upon vegetation and through that upon the life of the region. A computergenerated map of Democratic and Republican voting in the state of North Dakota presumes that such a spatial understanding of political choices tells us something significant about the relationship between location and political behavior. To look at a Willa Cather novel from the perspective of Red Cloud presumes that in some ways Cather carried her Nebraska childhood and youth with her during her adult years as a creator of fiction in New York and the East. Furthermore, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of the physicist applies as well to the art historian: the observer\u27s questions necessarily color the results of our data-gathering. The inductive process is shaped by our hypotheses, the questions that seem presently meaningful to us. These elementary but often overlooked principles are essential to an appreciation of the role of the visual arts in the understanding of a regional culture. Simply put, a regional art is an attempt to be space- and perhaps time-specific about a particular area, to report to the world the contours and character of a limited geographical district. Both the artists who create these images and the critic-historians of this process posit the value of the local above or at least on a par with the national or the universal. The seeming obviousness of this formulation masks the fact that it is a relatively new one. As a mode of social interpretation, regionalism is a late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century phenomenon. The presumption that the Great Plains and other sections haye influenced our national development as distinctive geographical and cultural spaces, the fractionalization of a monolithic American experience into regional components, and a concomitant redefinition of our relation to a parent Europe by relocating American qualities in terms of western or midwestern experience-these are processes that we associate especially with the writings of Frederick Jackson Turner and his intellectual followers from the 1890s on.

Effect of the T90-codend on the catch quality of cod (Gadus morhua) compared to the conventional codend configuration in the Barents Sea bottom trawl fishery

The aim of this study was to compare the catch quality of Northeast Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the Barents Sea bottom trawl fishery caught using the conventional configuration (a sorting grid followed by a diamond mesh (T0) codend) and a T90° turned mesh codend (T90) without a grid. Twenty hauls were conducted, consisting of 10 hauls with the conventional configuration and 10 hauls with the T90-codend. The catch quality was assessed using the catch-damages-index (CDI) and a newly developed method using VIS/NIR hyperspectral imaging to estimate the residual blood abundances in the fish muscle. The probability of obtaining fish with no damage was 23.4% (CI: 16.3–31.1%) for cod captured by the conventional configuration, and 21.2% (CI: 15.4–27.2%) for cod captured by the T90-codend. The average blood abundance (in arbitrary unit) was 0.86 (CI: 0.85–0.87) for cod captured by the conventional configuration and 0.88 (CI: 0.87–0.88) for cod captured by the T90-codend. Catch quality of the hauls obtained using the two gears did not differ significantly in terms of catch damage or residual blood levels in the cod. Hence, this study demonstrated that T90-codends do not compromise catch quality compared to regular diamond meshed codends.publishedVersio

Using coloured filters to reduce the symptoms of visual stress in children with reading delay

Background: Meares Irlen Syndrome (MIS), otherwise known as “visual stress”, is one condition that can cause difficulties with reading. Aim: This study aimed to compare the effect of two coloured-filter systems on the symptoms of visual stress in children with reading delay. Methods: The study design was a pre-test, post-test, randomized head-to-head comparison of two filter systems on the symptoms of visual stress in school children. A total of 68 UK mainstream schoolchildren with significant impairment in reading ability completed the study. Results: The filter systems appeared to have a large effect on the reported symptoms between pre and post three-month time points (d = 2.5, r = 0.78). Both filter types appeared to have large effects (Harris d = 1.79, r = 0.69 and DRT d = 3.22, r = 0.85). Importantly, 35% of participants’ reported that their symptoms had resolved completely; 72% of the 68 children appeared to gain improvements in three or more visual stress symptoms. Conclusion and significance: The reduction in symptoms, which appeared to be brought about by the use of coloured filters, eased the visual discomfort experienced by these children when reading. This type of intervention therefore has the potential to facilitate occupational engagement

Insights from Actual Day-Ahead Bidding of Hydropower

We analyse bidding behavior in the Nordic electricity market, where producers submit supply schedules for tomorrow's generation in a day-ahead auction.  We use the two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear program of Fleten and Kristoffersen (2007) to generate efficient bids to assist in the analysis. These bids are compared to those submitted by three Nordic reservoir hydropower producers over four two-week periods in 2011. Being price takers, the producers maximize their profits by bidding their marginal cost. We find that the hydropower producers often come close to the model-optimal result. However, not all marginal costs are taken into account, possibly leading to overproduction at low prices. Marginal costs seem in some cases to be overestimated at high production levels, leading to underproduction in some situations

Commercializing Biomedical Research Through Securitization Techniques

Biomedical innovation has become riskier, more expensive and more difficult to finance with traditional sources such as private and public equity. Here we propose a financial structure in which a large number of biomedical programs at various stages of development are funded by a single entity to substantially reduce the portfolio's risk. The portfolio entity can finance its activities by issuing debt, a critical advantage because a much larger pool of capital is available for investment in debt versus equity. By employing financial engineering techniques such as securitization, it can raise even greater amounts of more-patient capital. In a simulation using historical data for new molecular entities in oncology from 1990 to 2011, we find that megafunds of $5–15 billion may yield average investment returns of 8.9–11.4% for equity holders and 5–8% for 'research-backed obligation' holders, which are lower than typical venture-capital hurdle rates but attractive to pension funds, insurance companies and other large institutional investors

Survey of Period Variations of Superhumps in SU UMa-Type Dwarf Novae. VIII: The Eighth Year (2015-2016)

Continuing the project described by Kato et al. (2009, arXiv:0905.1757), we collected times of superhump maxima for 128 SU UMa-type dwarf novae observed mainly during the 2015-2016 season and characterized these objects. The data have improved the distribution of orbital periods, the relation between the orbital period and the variation of superhumps, the relation between period variations and the rebrightening type in WZ Sge-type objects. Coupled with new measurements of mass ratios using growing stages of superhumps, we now have a clearer and statistically greatly improved evolutionary path near the terminal stage of evolution of cataclysmic variables. Three objects (V452 Cas, KK Tel, ASASSN-15cl) appear to have slowly growing superhumps, which is proposed to reflect the slow growth of the 3:1 resonance near the stability border. ASASSN-15sl, ASASSN-15ux, SDSS J074859.55+312512.6 and CRTS J200331.3-284941 are newly identified eclipsing SU UMa-type (or WZ Sge-type) dwarf novae. ASASSN-15cy has a short (~0.050 d) superhump period and appears to belong to EI Psc-type objects with compact secondaries having an evolved core. ASASSN-15gn, ASASSN-15hn, ASASSN-15kh and ASASSN-16bu are candidate period bouncers with superhump periods longer than 0.06 d. We have newly obtained superhump periods for 79 objects and 13 orbital periods, including periods from early superhumps. In order that the future observations will be more astrophysically beneficial and rewarding to observers, we propose guidelines how to organize observations of various superoutbursts.Comment: 123 pages, 162 figures, 119 tables, accepted for publication in PASJ (including supplementary information

Executive summary: heart disease and stroke statistics--2013 update: a report from the American Heart Association.

Each year, the American Heart Association (AHA), in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies, brings together the most up-to-date statistics on heart disease, stroke, other vascular diseases, and their risk factors and presents them in its Heart Disease and Stroke Statistical Update*The Statistical Update is a valuable resource for researchers, clinicians, healthcare policy makers, media professionals, the lay public, and many others who seek the best national data available on heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular disease-related morbidity and mortality and the risks, quality of care, medical procedures and operations, and costs associated with the management of these diseases in a single document*Indeed, since 1999, the Statistical Update has been cited \u3e10 500 times in the literature, based on citations of all annual versions*In 2011 alone, the various Statistical Updates were cited ≈1500 times (data from ISI Web of Science)*In recent years, the Statistical Update has undergone some major changes with the addition of new chapters and major updates across multiple areas, as well as increasing the number of ways to access and use the information assembled*For this year\u27s edition, the Statistics Committee, which produces the document for the AHA, updated all of the current chapters with the most recent nationally representative data and inclusion of relevant articles from the literature over the past year*This year\u27s edition also implements a new chapter organization to reflect the spectrum of cardiovascular health behaviors and health factors and risks, as well as subsequent complicating conditions, disease states, and outcomes*Also, the 2013 Statistical Update contains new data on the monitoring and benefits of cardiovascular health in the population, with additional new focus on evidence-based approaches to changing behaviors, implementation strategies, and implications of the AHA\u27s 2020 Impact Goals*Below are a few highlights from this year\u27s Update . © 2013 American Heart Association, Inc