BOOK REVIEW OF EAT, PRAY, LOVE BY ELIZABETH GILBERT

This book review is concerned with Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert's novel is full of real life experience that was undergone by Gilbert herself. Gilbert's story in this novel triggered the writer's curiosity to obtain a deep understanding of how the main character deals with how she survives from her anxiety about life.Eat, Pray, Love, which the writer reviews in this final project, is the first edition of Eat, Pray, Love; it was published in 2006 by Penguin Books. The novel has 352 pages and 108 chapters, and it is basically divided into three main parts. Each part explains the story of Gilbert in each country that she visited: Italy, India, and Indonesia respectively

Guidelines and Procedures for Patent Application

To educate Filipinos on IPR, this article provides a rigorous discussion on the Philippine patent system and patent law. It identifies the patentable grant, the requirements of patentability and records a step-by-step patent application. This article has been presented during the DOST-PIDS Seminar-Discussion on “Intellectual Property Rights: Policy Issues and Perspectives” on December 13, 1991.patent and license, intellectual property rights

Guidelines and Procedures for Patent Application

To educate Filipinos on IPR, this article provides a rigorous discussion on the Philippine patent system and patent law. It identifies the patentable grant, the requirements of patentability and records a step-by-step patent application. This article has been presented during the DOST-PIDS Seminar-Discussion on “Intellectual Property Rights: Policy Issues and Perspectives” on December 13, 1991.patent and license, intellectual property rights

Sensitivity analysis for solar plates

Economic evaluation methods and analyses of emerging photovoltaic (PV) technology since 1976 was prepared. This type of analysis was applied to the silicon research portion of the PV Program in order to determine the importance of this research effort in relationship to the successful development of commercial PV systems. All four generic types of PV that use silicon were addressed: crystal ingots grown either by the Czochralski method or an ingot casting method; ribbons pulled directly from molten silicon; an amorphous silicon thin film; and use of high concentration lenses. Three technologies were analyzed: the Union Carbide fluidized bed reactor process, the Hemlock process, and the Union Carbide Komatsu process. The major components of each process were assessed in terms of the costs of capital equipment, labor, materials, and utilities. These assessments were encoded as the probabilities assigned by experts for achieving various cost values or production rates

SAMICS: Input data preparation

The Solar Array Manufacturing Industry Costing Standards (SAMICS) provide standard formats, data, assumptions, and procedures for estimating the price that a manufacturer would have to charge for the product of a specified manufacturing process sequence. A line-by-line explanation is given of those standard formats which describe the economically important characteristics of the manufacturing processes and the technological structure of the companies and the industry. This revision provides an updated presentation of Format A Process Description, consistent with the October 1978 version of that form. A checklist of items which should be entered on Format A as direct expenses is included

Platform Relative Sensor Abstractions across Mobile Robots using Computer Vision and Sensor Integration

Uniform sensor management and abstraction across different robot platforms is a difficult task due to the sheer diversity of sensing devices. However, because these sensors can be grouped into categories that in essence provide the same information, we can capture their similarities and create abstractions. An example would be distance data measured by an assortment of range sensors, or alternatively extracted from a camera using image processing. This paper describes how using software components it is possible to uniformly construct high-level abstractions of sensor information across various robots in a way to support the portability of common code that uses these abstractions (e.g. obstacle avoidance, wall following). We demonstrate our abstractions on a number of robots using different configurations of range sensors and cameras

Software Reuse across Robotic Platforms: Limiting the effects of diversity

Robots have diverse capabilities and complex interactions with their environment. Software development for robotic platforms is time consuming due to the complex nature of the tasks to be performed. Such an environment demands sound software engineering practices to produce high quality software. However software engineering in the robotics domain fails to facilitate any significant level of software reuse or portability. This paper identifies the major issues limiting software reuse in the robotics domain. Lack of standardisation, diversity of robotic platforms, and the subtle effects of environmental interaction all contribute to this problem. It is then shown that software components, fuzzy logic, and related techniques can be used together to address this problem. While complete software reuse is not possible, it is demonstrated that significant levels of software reuse can be obtained. Without an acceptable level of reuse or portability, software engineering in the robotics domain will not be able to meet the demands of a rapidly developing field. The work presented in this paper demonstrates a method for supporting software reuse across robotic platforms and hence facilitating improved software engineering practices

Reusable Software Components for Robots Using Fuzzy Abstractions

Mobile robots today, while varying greatly in design, often have a large number of similarities in terms of their tasks and goals. Navigation, obstacle avoidance, and vision are all examples. In turn, robots of similar design, but with varying configurations, should be able to share the bulk of their controlling software. Any changes required should be minimal and ideally only to specify new hardware configurations. However, it is difficult to achieve such flexibility, mainly due to the enormous variety of robot hardware available and the huge number of possible configurations. Monolithic controllers that can handle such variety are impossible to build. This paper will investigate these portability problems, as well as techniques to manage common abstractions for user-designed components. The challenge is in creating new methods for robot software to support a diverse variety of robots, while also being easily upgraded and extended. These methods can then provide new ways to support the operational and functional reuse of the same high-level components across a variety of robots

Economic implications of current systems

The primary goals of this study are to estimate the value of R&D to photovoltaic (PV) metallization systems cost, and to provide a method for selecting an optimal metallization method for any given PV system. The value-added cost and relative electrical performance of 25 state-of-the-art (SOA) and advanced metallization system techniques are compared

Massachusetts School Discipline Policy Change: Exclusion, Alternatives, and Inequality in Public District and Charter Schools

School discipline reform is of growing interest to policymakers as ongoing research reveals the negative effects of current school discipline policies. In the U.S., the most popular models of school discipline use exclusionary practice, which includes suspension and expulsion. Studies have shown that exclusionary discipline contributes to undesired social outcomes such as poor academic performance, school drop out, unemployment, and even incarceration. Additionally, exclusionary discipline and its negative consequences disproportionately affect racial minorities and other vulnerable groups of students. Reform of current state policy is a necessary first step toward implementing alternative discipline practice in schools. In 2012 Massachusetts legislature passed Chapter 222 with the intent to reduce overall use of exclusion and disparities associated with its inequitable use. In the summer of 2014 the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education implemented regulations based on the law change. Regulations include changes in due process for exclusion for emergency removal for part of a school day, changes in reporting that designate exclusion as long term more rapidly, required educational service for students serving long term suspension, and interventions for schools that consistently report inequitable rates of discipline between groups of students. This study explores the policy’s early impact on discipline rates, particularly disparate rates between white and racial minority students and between the general student population and students with disabilities. It also investigates possible disparity in discipline rates of public charter and district schools and seeks evidence of whether schools are moving away from exclusionary models to alternative discipline models. Statistical analysis of annual state and case studies of school handbook policies are the two methods used in the study. Results show that downward trends in some exclusions started before the policy change, some exclusions increased immediately after the policy change, inequitable rates between student groups are persistent, and the rates of discipline in charter and district schools are very disparate. Given the inconsistent results and lack of apparent evidence that schools are practicing alternatives to exclusion, it is recommended that Massachusetts bolster its new regulations to better achieve its equity goals