Landscaping Hispaniola Moreau de Saint-Méry's border politics

This article focuses on Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry's <i>Description Topographique et Politique de la partie espagnole de l'Isle Saint-Domingue </i>(1796) and his <i>Description Topographique, Physique, Civile, Politique et Historique de la partie française de l'Isle Saint-Domingue </i> (1797). The Descriptions were both written before the beginning of the French Revolution and the 1791 slave revolt in Saint Domingue but were published when the colonial frontier had been abolished (at least de jure if not de facto) by the 1795 Peace of Basle. Overall, the article argues that the two Descriptions are ultimately committed to the (re)inscription of the colonial frontier but intriguingly oscillate between its erasure and its reinforcement. It begins by focusing on Saint-Méry's territorial projections and appropriative landscaping of the Spanish colony; it highlights the important role played by the border in the racial politics of Hispaniola and then revisits Saint-Mery's border politics on the island in the light of the author's conviction that France should reannex Louisiana, given to Spain in 1762

Potential Climatic Impacts and Reliability of Very Large-Scale Wind Farms

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).Meeting future world energy needs while addressing climate change requires large-scale deployment of low or zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emission technologies such as wind energy. The widespread availability of wind power has fueled legitimate interest in this renewable energy source as one of the needed technologies. For very large-scale utilization of this resource, there are however potential environmental impacts, and also problems arising from its inherent intermittency, in addition to the present need to lower unit costs. To explore some of these issues, we use a threedimensional climate model to simulate the potential climate effects associated with installation of wind-powered generators over vast areas of land or coastal ocean. Using windmills to meet 10% or more of global energy demand in 2100, could cause surface warming exceeding 1oC over land installations. In contrast, surface cooling exceeding 1oC is computed over ocean installations, but the validity of simulating the impacts of windmills by simply increasing the ocean surface drag needs further study. Significant warming or cooling remote from both the land and ocean installations, and alterations of the global distributions of rainfall and clouds also occur. These results are influenced by the competing effects of increases in roughness and decreases in wind speed on near-surface turbulent heat fluxes, the differing nature of land and ocean surface friction, and the dimensions of the installations parallel and perpendicular to the prevailing winds. These results are also dependent on the accuracy of the model used, and the realism of the methods applied to simulate windmills. Additional theory and new field observations will be required for their ultimate validation. Intermittency of wind power on daily, monthly and longer time scales as computed in these simulations and inferred from meteorological observations, poses a demand for one or more options to ensure reliability, including backup generation capacity, very long distance power transmission lines, and onsite energy storage, each with specific economic and/or technological challenges.This study received support from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is funded by a consortium of government, industry and foundation sponsors

From Multi-User Virtual Environment to 3D Virtual Learning Environment

While digital virtual worlds have been used in education for a number of years, advances in the capabilities and spread of technology have fed a recent boom in interest in massively multi‐user 3D virtual worlds for entertainment, and this in turn has led to a surge of interest in their educational applications. In this paper we briefly review the use of virtual worlds for education, from informal learning to formal instruction, and consider what is required to turn a virtual world from a Multi‐User Virtual Environment into a fully fledged 3D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In this we focus on the development of Sloodle – a system which integrates the popular 3D virtual world of Second Life with the open‐source VLE Moodle. Our intent is not simply to provide additional learning support features for Second Life, but to study more generally the ways in which integrated virtual environments can benefit teaching and learning, and this is the focus of our closing discussion

Web interfaces to enhance CAL materials: Case studies from law and statistics

One impact of the ‘information age’ is that a variety of new learning resources have become available to both students and tutors. Using these resources effectively and with a sound pedagogical basis presents a whole array of issues for teaching professionals. In this paper the authors describe the development and implementation of a Web interface to existing computer‐based learning materials in an attempt to enhance the student learning experience. Although the innovations occurred in two very different disciplines ‐statistics and law ‐ there are common lessons to be learned about the process of learning and the use of technology

Quality criteria for multimedia

The meaning of the term quality as used by multimedia workers in the field has become devalued. Almost every package is promoted by its developers as being of the ‘highest quality’. This paper draws on practical experience from a number of major projects to argue, from a quality‐assurance position, that multimedia materials should meet pre‐defined criteria relating to their objectives, content and incidence of errors

Detecting Family Resemblance: Automated Genre Classification.

This paper presents results in automated genre classification of digital documents in PDF format. It describes genre classification as an important ingredient in contextualising scientific data and in retrieving targetted material for improving research. The current paper compares the role of visual layout, stylistic features and language model features in clustering documents and presents results in retrieving five selected genres (Scientific Article, Thesis, Periodicals, Business Report, and Form) from a pool of materials populated with documents of the nineteen most popular genres found in our experimental data set.

Development of a Cost-Effective Database Software for Psychiatric Research: A Study From Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Background: Technological progression made drastic changes in health care. Still there is a growing concern about proper utilization of health information within hospitals for various research activities. Huge volumes of such health information in majority of hospitals are redundant due to lack of appropriate and cost-effective technological tools for retrieving relevant health information for research purpose. Objective: To develop a cost-effective and user-friendly computerized medical record database for psychiatry using available technology with the department. Methodology: Study performed at a tertiary care teaching hospital in Udupi district of South India. Various datasets from psychiatry medical records were utilized for the design and creation of database. A computerized database called PsyCase was developed with the help of technology available within the department. A 4612 patient’s data were entered into the PsyCase and subjected to various analyses. Results: Applications of PsyCase in various epidemiological studies were explored through performing numerous analyses with actual data. PsyCase was found effective in supporting psychiatric research as well as routine clinical and administrative activities. Conclusion: This study emphasizes need of appropriate use of technology available within a healthcare system to facilitate medical research in psychiatry and role of health information professional in such initiatives. Healthcare organization must focus on collective utilization of resources within the system to improve the utilization of health information for medical research

New literacies and future educational culture

The paper draws attention to three developments that are crucial to online education. First, the new literacy required by group discussion in writing, i.e. by computer‐mediated communication ('e‐talk') is discussed Educators are urged to delimit and structure their courses so that online conversations in writing are successfully framed for effective discourse. Second, new literacy arising from the merging of multimedia with text is considered It is maintained that this will enhance communication, not debase it. Third, the way that increasing ease of information retrieval is eroding boundaries between traditional disciplines is discussed It is argued that this may create new difficulties in education. The paper recommends various ways of overcoming the problems that arise from the three developments

Annotation of two large contiguous regions from the Haemonchus contortus genome using RNA-seq and comparative analysis with Caenorhabditis elegans

The genomes of numerous parasitic nematodes are currently being sequenced, but their complexity and size, together with high levels of intra-specific sequence variation and a lack of reference genomes, makes their assembly and annotation a challenging task. Haemonchus contortus is an economically significant parasite of livestock that is widely used for basic research as well as for vaccine development and drug discovery. It is one of many medically and economically important parasites within the strongylid nematode group. This group of parasites has the closest phylogenetic relationship with the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, making comparative analysis a potentially powerful tool for genome annotation and functional studies. To investigate this hypothesis, we sequenced two contiguous fragments from the H. contortus genome and undertook detailed annotation and comparative analysis with C. elegans. The adult H. contortus transcriptome was sequenced using an Illumina platform and RNA-seq was used to annotate a 409 kb overlapping BAC tiling path relating to the X chromosome and a 181 kb BAC insert relating to chromosome I. In total, 40 genes and 12 putative transposable elements were identified. 97.5% of the annotated genes had detectable homologues in C. elegans of which 60% had putative orthologues, significantly higher than previous analyses based on EST analysis. Gene density appears to be less in H. contortus than in C. elegans, with annotated H. contortus genes being an average of two-to-three times larger than their putative C. elegans orthologues due to a greater intron number and size. Synteny appears high but gene order is generally poorly conserved, although areas of conserved microsynteny are apparent. C. elegans operons appear to be partially conserved in H. contortus. Our findings suggest that a combination of RNA-seq and comparative analysis with C. elegans is a powerful approach for the annotation and analysis of strongylid nematode genomes

Galois theory and Lubin-Tate cochains on classifying spaces

We consider brave new cochain extensions F(BG +,R) → F(EG +,R), where R is either a Lubin-Tate spectrum E n or the related 2-periodic Morava K-theory K n , and G is a finite group. When R is an Eilenberg-Mac Lane spectrum, in some good cases such an extension is a G-Galois extension in the sense of John Rognes, but not always faithful. We prove that for E n and K n these extensions are always faithful in the K n local category. However, for a cyclic p-group C p r, the cochain extension F(BC p r +,E n ) → F(EC p r +, E n ) is not a Galois extension because it ramifies. As a consequence, it follows that the E n -theory Eilenberg-Moore spectral sequence for G and BG does not always converge to its expected target