An iconic programming language for sensor-based robots

In this paper we describe an iconic programming language called Onika for sensor-based robotic systems. Onika is both modular and reconfigurable and can be used with any system architecture and real-time operating system. Onika is also a multi-level programming environment wherein tasks are built by connecting a series of icons which, in turn, can be defined in terms of other icons at the lower levels. Expert users are also allowed to use control block form to define servo tasks. The icons in Onika are both shape and color coded, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, thus providing a form of error control in the development of high level applications

Frugal innovation for healthcare: strategies and tools for the identification and evaluation of frugal and reverse innovations in healthcare

Global healthcare systems are united by their desire to widen patient access to safe and effective clinical services in the face of increasing demand and financial constraints. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a variety of ingenious product and process solutions, termed frugal innovations, have been able to deliver services at a fraction of the cost. It is the broad proposition of this work that such ideas could be applicable to high-income countries (HICs), a concept labeled reverse innovation. Using a conceptual model of innovation scouting derived from the causal mechanism of critical realism, this work examined the development and testing of a tool to deductively identify frugal innovations in healthcare (FIH-ID tool) and then evaluated methodology to assess the reversibility of potential of frugal innovations. The FIH-ID tool demonstrated consistently acceptable inter-rater reliability scores using different methods of application and different raters, moreover, construct validity was shown by its ability to identify well-known frugal innovations. With respect to the assessment of the reversibility potential, the results of the present study highlighted the challenges of undertaking such a complex evaluation process using a simple scoring system. Raters achieved poor levels of inter-rater reliability and only 2 innovations were thought likely to reverse to a HIC. This study presents the first application of a critical realist approach to innovation scouting. It has identified a cohort of 76 potential frugal innovations in healthcare suggesting that the FIH-ID tool is likely to be a valuable asset for similar studies in the future. It has highlighted the challenges of assessing the reversibility potential of innovations from LMICs. It has documented the emergence of the global innovation curator, entities that seek to identify, curate and promote innovations from LMICs, and it proposes a conceptual model for the role of global innovation curators in the diffusion of innovation.Open Acces

The Burden of Western History: Kansas, Collective Memory, and the Reunification of the American Empire, 1854-1913

This dissertation, The Burden of Western History: Kansas, Collective Memory, and the Reunification of the American Empire, 1854-1913, is a widely-ramifying study of the politics of collective memory in Kansas, where the Civil War can be said to have begun in 1854, where it unfolded in especially bloody and traumatic fashion, and continued to be fought in the domain of collective memory into the 20th century. The struggle over collective memory in Kansas is a story that disrupts the conventional narrative of Civil War memory as an ideological victory for the South and foregrounds the interrelated significance of several attempted subjugations --that of Southerners over Northerners, Northerners over Southerners, whites over African Americans, and whites over Native Americans--as foundational to understanding the genesis of Kansans,\u27 and by extension, Americans\u27 collective memory of the war. In short, this dissertation transforms our understanding of Civil War memory by recasting it not simply as a struggle over the legacy of war, slavery, and race, but rather, more broadly, one over war, slavery, and race in the context of empire. Interpreting the struggle over Civil War memory becomes a more morally complicated enterprise when it is framed within the twin contexts of slavery and empire. Unlike most Americans, Kansans did not forget the bloody emancipatory struggles that led up to 1861 and continued through the war and Reconstruction. They celebrated African Americans\u27 agency in their own liberation, as well as the morally righteous cause of stopping the advance of slavery, in a host of old settlers\u27 reunions and other commemorative rituals. Indeed, as late as 1910, Kansan William Allen White and his ally Theodore Roosevelt were hailing John Brown of violent Pottawatomie fame as a political model. But the Kansas version of emancipationist memory erased from the story the extinction of Native American landholdings and destruction of peoples that was the actual first chapter of Bleeding Kansas and placed Southerners at the bottom of a hierarchy of relative barbarism below savage Native Americans. When they turned on each other, the white settlers of Kansas resorted to traumatic home invasions and murders to establish their version of an ideal American empire, traumas which Kansans recounted in loving detail in the late 19th century, but took great pains to distinguish from the barbaric activities of Native Americans and Southerners. Finally, John Brown\u27s murderous assault on slave owners at Pottawatomie was reimagined as an act of liberating imperial conquest, a useable past for an early 20th-century Progressive empire-in-the-making. The dissertation shows not only that the imperial context is key to understanding the struggle over Civil War memory, but also that making a modern American West and American empire at the turn of the 20th century occurred not as an escape from the tortured prewar and wartime history of North and South but in deep engagement with it. Such was the burden of Western history

The Most Beautiful Place on Earth: Wallace Stegner in California, 1945-1993

This dissertation explores the life and work of the writer Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) and his intellectual efforts to create, clarify, and defend the contours of a “geography of hope” in the American West. Chapter 1 begins with Stegner’s move to California in 1945. In the context of his developing regional vision as expressed in early articles and books, it traces Stegner’s attempts to build a range of institutions in California as well as his first writings that either adopted the state as its subject or used it as a setting for fictional work. Chapter 2 explores a research project that Stegner undertook with funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and as a member of the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) in the mid-1950s. This project reflected Stegner’s understanding of western history and his own past in more comprehensive terms and the chapter traces his growing commitment to fiction as a resource for addressing the questions he thought most important to explore in his historical moment. The subsequent three chapters include close readings of three novels: All the Little Live Things (1967), Angle of Repose (1971), and The Spectator Bird (1976). The novels are united by location, themes, and a first-person narrator who opens the book with ruminations and something of a thesis. Two of these three books won major awards, so they also marked the summit of Stegner’s national recognition as a writer of American fiction. Each of the readings reveals ways that Stegner and his readers addressed the cultural changes of the 1960s, adding nuance to the historiography of an era that has more often been marked by an emphasis on polarization. The conclusion is focused on Greensboro, Vermont, the place where Stegner chose to have his ashes spread after his death. Greensboro served as a realistic but still at times utopian foil for Stegner’s exploration of the western “formless non-communities” that are the focus points of the previous chapters. Together, these chapters illuminate the different ways that Stegner attempted to understand the limits of community in the American West while deepening understanding of the era and the theme of place in American history more broadly

An evolutionary approach to the optimisation of autonomous pod distribution for application in an urban transportation service

For autonomous vehicles (AVs), which when deployed in urban areas are called “pods”, to be used as part of a commercially viable low-cost urban transport system, they will need to operate efficiently. Among ways to achieve efficiency, is to minimise time vehicles are not serving users. To reduce the amount of wasted time, this paper presents a novel approach for distribution of AVs within an urban environment. Our approach uses evolutionary computation, in the form of a genetic algorithm (GA), which is applied to a simulation of an intelligent transportation service, operating in the city of Coventry, UK. The goal of the GA is to optimise distribution of pods, to reduce the amount of user waiting time. To test the algorithm, real-world transport data was obtained for Coventry, which in turn was processed to generate user demand patterns. Results from the study showed a 30% increase in the number of successful journeys completed in a 24 hours, compared to a random distribution. The implications of these findings could yield significant benefits for fleet management companies. These include increases in profits per day, a decrease in capital cost, and better energy efficiency. The algorithm could also be adapted to any service offering pick up and drop of points, including package delivery and transportation of goods

Interaction of the Streptomyces Wbl protein WhiD with the principal sigma factor σHrdB depends on the WhiD [4Fe-4S] cluster

The bacterial protein WhiD belongs to the Wbl family of iron–sulfur [Fe-S] proteins present only in the actinomycetes. In Streptomyces coelicolor, it is required for the late stages of sporulation, but precisely how it functions is unknown. Here, we report results from in vitro and in vivo experiments with WhiD from Streptomyces venezuelae (SvWhiD), which differs from S. coelicolor WhiD (ScWhiD) only at the C terminus. We observed that, like ScWhiD and other Wbl proteins, SvWhiD binds a [4Fe-4S] cluster that is moderately sensitive to O2 and highly sensitive to nitric oxide (NO). However, although all previous studies have reported that Wbl proteins are monomers, we found that SvWhiD exists in a monomer–dimer equilibrium associated with its unusual C-terminal extension. Several Wbl proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are known to interact with its principal sigma factor SigA. Using bacterial two-hybrid, gel filtration, and MS analyses, we demonstrate that SvWhiD interacts with domain 4 of the principal sigma factor of Streptomyces, σHrdB (σHrdB4). Using MS, we determined the dissociation constant (Kd) for the SvWhiD–σHrdB4 complex as ~0.7 μM, consistent with a relatively tight binding interaction. We found that complex formation was cluster dependent and that a reaction with NO, which was complete at 8–10 NO molecules per cluster, resulted in dissociation into the separate proteins. The SvWhiD [4Fe-4S] cluster was significantly less sensitive to reaction with O2 and NO when SvWhiD was bound to σHrdB4, consistent with protection of the cluster in the complex

Repeating platinum/bevacizumab in recurrent or progressive cervical cancer yields marginal survival benefits

Our objective was to assess overall survival of cervical cancer patients following prior platinum/bevacizumab chemotherapy, comparing retreatment with platinum/bevacizumab with alternative therapies. A retrospective analysis was performed of women who received platinum/bevacizumab (PB) chemotherapy for cervical cancer at Washington University between July 1, 2005 and December 31, 2015. Wilcoxon rank-sum exact test and Fisher's exact test were used to compare the treatment groups, and Kaplan Meier curves were generated. Cox regression analyses were performed, with treatment free interval and prior therapy response included as covariates. Of 84 patients who received PB chemotherapy, 59 (70%) received no second line chemotherapy, as they did not recur, progressed without further chemotherapy, were lost to follow up, or expired. Of the remaining 25 patients, 9 were retreated with the combination of platinum/bevacizumab (PB), 6 were retreated with a platinum regimen without bevacizumab (P), and 10 were retreated with neither (not-P). The only long-term survivor was in the not-P group and was treated with an immunotherapy agent. Median overall survival of all patients was 7.1 months. There was a marginal difference in survival between women in the PB and not-PB groups (11.8 versus 5.7 months; HR 3.02, 95% CI, 0.98–9.28). There was no difference in survival based on platinum interval (HR 0.81; 95% CI, 0.27–2.45). Outcomes are grim for women retreated after platinum/bevacizumab therapy and are only marginally improved by retreatment with a platinum/bevacizumab regimen. Rather than additional PB therapy, women with cervical cancer who recur after platinum/bevacizumab should consider supportive care or clinical trials

Senior Recital: Matthew Stewart

Kemp Recital HallOctober 25, 2015Sunday Evening7:30 p.m

Are structural changes in the agri-food sector causing the instability of parochial ag-producers?

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 17, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Dr. Harvey James Jr.M.S. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.Parochial (Amish and Mennonites) agriculture producers have been known for their stability (historically large numbers) (Kollmorgen, 1943). Though, more recently, the percentage of parochial members who are ag-producers has been steadily declining. Game theory modeling suggests that parochial networks can be evolutionary stable, because of improved cooperation that promotes trust, despite constraints to scale efficiencies that may hinder economic performance (Bowles and Gintis, 2004). This study examines if the Parochial ag-producer declines are a result of structural changes (production contracts and new generation cooperatives) that have improved cooperation, and promoted trust, in large-scale anonymous agri-food trading relative to direct trading using parochialism. Findings suggest that structural changes to the agri-food sector may be a source of parochial ag-producer instability.Includes bibliographical references