Diurnal variation of overdense meteor echo duration and ozone

The diurnal variation of the median duration of overdense sporadic radar meteor echoes is examined. The meteors recorded in August, December, and January by the Ondrejov meteor radar during the period 1958-1990 were used for the analysis. A maximum median echo duration 1-3 hours after the time of local sunrise in the meteor region confirms the already known sunrise effect. Minimum echo duration occurring at the time of sunset seems to be the most important point of diurnal variation of the echo duration, when ozone is no longer dissociated by solar UV radiation. The effect of diurnal changes of the echo duration should be considered when the mass distribution of meteor showers is analyzed

Information Services and ICT Development in Agriculture of the Czech Republic

The paper presents results of KIT (Department of Information Technologies) research which maps the actual state and expected development trends of information and communication technologies in conditions of CR agriculture. It includes results of investigation realized in 2008 with connection to the actually carried out inquiry in the first half-year 2009.Broadband, ADSL, FTTx, Wi-Fi, CDMA, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, G, A, I, N,

Distributed Recognition of Reference Nodes for Wireless Sensor Network Localization

All known localization techniques for wireless sensor and ad-hoc networks require certain set of reference nodes being used for position estimation. The anchor-free techniques in contrast to anchor-based do not require reference nodes called anchors to be placed in the network area before localization operation itself, but they can establish own reference coordinate system to be used for the relative position estimation. We observed that contemporary anchor-free localization algorithms achieve a low localization error, but dissipate significant energy reserves during the recognition of reference nodes used for the position estimation. Therefore, we have proposed the optimized anchor-free localization algorithm referred to as BRL (Boundary Recognition aided Localization), which achieves a low localization error and mainly reduces the communication cost of the reference nodes recognition phase. The proposed BRL algorithm was investigated throughout the extensive simulations on the database of networks with the different number of nodes and densities and was compared in terms of communication cost and localization error with the known related algorithms such as AFL and CRP. Through the extensive simulations we have observed network conditions where novel BRL algorithm excels in comparison with the state of art

Virtual form of education in lifelong learning - chance for the country

The availability of education, including lifelong learning, is one of the value measures of quality of life in advanced countries. However, there are still significant differences between a township and a rural region. Centres of education are mainly situated in big cities; smaller municipalities are separated from these centres by tens or hundreds of kilometers (according to the conditions of the Czech Republic). While educating young people, it is usually accepted that they commute towards education; there is a whole range of social and cultural aspects; and above all, they have time for that - it is their main “working†load. The opposite situation is the case in lifelong learning, which is conducted in parallel with full-time employment but is necessary for effective and competitive performing of the employment. For participants of lifelong learning it is impossible to commute big distances; their working load does not allow it. Thus, those forms, in which so called „education which goes to the studentsâ€, are chosen. ICT brings an enormous opportunity to bring education closer to the rural regions. A text form of e-learning is practically already standard; but a voice and image broadcast give us inexhaustible possibilities of usage. The aim of this paper is to propose and verify methods of distant (virtual) education with the use of multimedia tools.E-learning, virtual education, lifelong learning, rural development, multimedia, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Embodied Desire: Establishing the Transmasculine Viewer

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

Traditional folk treatments versus chemical drugs in primary health care in Hungary

Background: Drug costs for patients are increasing in Hungary, together with the increasing support of state drug-budget, while simple, cheap and effective natural traditional folk-treatments are available.Aims: to collect the folk treatment-methods, to overview their effectiveness and side effects, to define its cost-effectiveness, to see if patients preferred these curative processes instead of, or together with, prescription medicines.Methods: The customs of using traditional treatments were studied in 11 practices from different parts of Hungary. Every tenth patient with no acute health problems visiting their GPs completed a questionnaire on folk-treatments use in case of different complaints and symptoms and on collaboration with health care providers and civil helpers.Results: The data of 189 patients were evaluated. The results show that Hungarian people use effective traditional treatments only in a few cases. Since most plants used as a folk-treatment can be cultivated in gardens, their price is significantly less than that of the pharmaceuticals’. Most of the patients were properly cooperating with the medical staff.Conclusion: Many simple traditional aliments have been forgotten. Patients often consider over-the-counter medicines as traditional folk treatments. While usually they properly use the medicinal plants, some improper elements have also been noticed. This raised the necessity of a continual patient education in addition to the CME for GP-s. Correct and effective use of simple folk treatments may decrease the high costs of medicines for the population and also for the National Health Insurance Fund while providing effective and easily obtainable therapy

Moralizing Women: The Expression of Belief in the Victorian Novel

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, English, 2014This dissertation examines the longstanding critical distaste for didactic literature and the marginalization of certain Victorian women novelists' work for its overt moral, religious, and political commitments. Exploring women's particular relationship to novelistic didacticism, I show that authors like Ellen Wood, George Eliot, Elizabeth Missing Sewell, and Sarah Grand consciously used didactic forms to address the risks of expressing belief in fiction and challenge stereotypes of the moralizing woman writer. Victorian women novelists faced difficulty avoiding charges of moralizing; while entering the public literary sphere brought charges of vulgar self-display, any counter emphasis on didactic aims brought related charges of moral vanity. Either way, women supposedly failed to embody the figure of the spontaneously inspired, unselfconscious artist celebrated by ethical and aesthetic discourse of the period. These novelists' experience of such constraints, however, prompted remarkable insights into the problematic ironies inherent in such notions of artistic unselfconsciousness as well as alternative strategies for managing the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in the novel. This project reveals that the modernist critique of Victorian moralizing had an antecedent in nineteenth-century religious tradition itself. Even more surprisingly, all the novelists I study, religious and secular alike, turn to religious forms--prayer in particular--to rethink authorial self-consciousness and the limited possibilities for expressing moral, religious, or political belief in literature. Conceptualizing prayer as an address to an audience between self and other, they cultivate an authorial voice that is neither overly (vainly) self-conscious nor impossibly unselfconscious. Their didacticism thus involves more than the artistically simplistic, morally presumptuous aim of saving the reader; instead, the engagement of the reader and the author with the novel's complex modes of moral self-consciousness allows them, willingly (after an extensive acknowledgment of the risks involved), to save each other

Nitrous oxide emissions from grazed grassland: effects of cattle management and soil conditions

Traditionally, dairy cattle spend a substantial part of the year on pastures. For organic farming within EU it is specified that ”all mammals must have access to pasturage or an open-air exercise area” which they must be able to use whenever ”weather conditions and the state of the ground permits” (Council Regulation [EEC] No 2092/91 ). Dairy production systems are characterized by a considerable N surplus, and N deposited during grazing represents a significant risk for environmental losses, including N2O emissions. Excess N is excreted mainly in the urine, the composition of which is influenced by factors such as lactation stage, sward quality and intake of supplements. Resulting N concentrations in urine patches can range from 20 to 80 g N m-2, and soil environmental conditions associated with such a range of N inputs could affect the potential for N2O production via nitrification and denitrification. Soil properties and fertilization also influence N2O emissions. This presentation shows results from a work package within the MIDAIR project which aimed to describe known sources of variability within the grazing system, and their impact on N2O emissions. The objective was to evaluate if management changes can be proposed that will reduce the risk for N2O emissions associated with grazing. Field studies have addressed the heterogeneity of soil physical, chemical and microbiological properties, while plot-scale and laboratory experiments have examined the fate of urinary C and N and the microbial response to urine deposition