Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Thermal Stress On Dual Task Performance And Attention Allocation, Bradley Chase, Waldemar Karwowski, Michael E. Benedict, Peter M. Queseda

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

A visual-visual dual task was designed to test the effect of the thermal environment on dual task performance and attention allocation. The temperatures selected for testing were 20 and 35°C Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) in experiment 1 and 25, 30 and 35°C Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) in experiment 2. In experiment 1, 34 volunteers were randomly assigned to one of the two temperature conditions. A variable representing accuracy on both tasks was coded such that a correct response was assigned only if the participant answered correctly on both tasks. In experiment 2, 42 volunteers were randomly assigned to …

The Open And The Suspension Of Being: A Review Article Of New Work By Agamben, Heller-Roazen, And Smock, Paolo Bartoloni

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Cultural Studies, Composition, And Pedagogy, Mark Mullen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Cultural Studies, Composition, and Pedagogy," Mark Mullen argues that while much cultural studies work makes claims for the transformative powers of a radical educational agenda, such work is often, surprisingly, deeply resistant to a complex discussion of pedagogy. The response to Mary Louise Pratt's theory of the "contact zone" offers a useful case study in this regard, and indicates the way in feelgood narratives of student and teacher empowerment are only made possible by a refusal to analyze the classroom as a workplace. Reliance upon depictions of the classroom as essentially an empty space playing host to …

Assessing Global Cge Model Validity Using Agricultural Price Volatility , Ernesto Valenzuela, Thomas Hertel, Roman Keeney, Jeff Reimer

GTAP Working Papers Archive

Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models are commonly used for global agricultural market analysis. However, concerns are sometimes raised about the quality of their output since key parameters may not be econometrically estimated and little emphasis is generally given to model assessment. This article addresses the latter issue by developing an approach to validating CGE models based on the ability to reproduce observed price volatility in agricultural markets. We show how patterns in the deviations between model predictions and validation criteria can be used to identify the weak points of a model and guide development of improved specifications with firmer empirical …

Hybridity And Whiteness In Claudine C. O'Hearn's Half And Half: Writings On Growing Up Biracial And Bicultural, Heather Latimer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Hybridity and Whiteness in Claudine C. O'Hearn's Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural," Heather Latimer examines the autobiographical collection Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural assembled and edited by Claudine C. O'Hearn. Latimer's analysis reveals how current models of hybridity theory are performed, articulated, and exemplified in the texts of O'Hearn's volume. In her analysis, Latimer explores the anxiety and tension about whiteness within hybridity theory, often reflected in the performance of hybrid aesthetics. Latimer argues that while some authors in Half and Half avoid talking about whiteness as …

Intercultural Communication And Speech Style, Fee-Alexandra Haase

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Intercultural Communication and Speech Style," Fee-Alexandra Haase discusses intercultural communication as a concept for the production and analysis of speeches and written texts. Starting with a theoretical and historical perspective, Haase exemplifies selected intercultural patterns found in different cultures. Further, based on definitions of style in rhetoric from different cultural backgrounds from the ancient Greek culture up to modern approaches of rhetoricians, Haase proposes a concept for the analysis of texts employing aspects of rhetoric as an intercultural concept. Haase locates in her concept methods of composition used for the analysis of texts and spoken words within …

The Problematics Of A Social Constructivist Approach To Science, Bryce Christensen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "The Problematics of a Social Constructivist Approach to Science," Bryce Christensen takes John Gray's hope that science can serve as a remedy for anthropocentrism as an entry point for discussing the debate between scientific realists and social constructivists. Christensen examines the way science appears to buttress the realist position when it confronts humans with truths that contradict their expectations and desires. In his discussion, Christensen also surveys the ways that science fits within social constructivist theory when it serves identifiable social needs or advances identifiable group interests. Further, Christensen identifies eschatological cosmology as an extreme test case …

The Quest For Body And Voice In Assia Djebar's So Vast The Prison, Susannah Rodríguez Drissi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Using Northrop Frye's definition of the quest novel and Joseph Campbell's writings, Susannah Rodríguez Drissi explores in her paper, "The Quest for Body and Voice in Assia Djebar's So Vast the Prison," the motif of the journey as Djebar adapts it to her female characters. Rodríguez Drissi proposes that in previous studies concerning the hero -- such as in James Frazer's The Golden Bough or in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces -- women are relegated to a secondary role. Recently, however, it has become evident that the study of the woman as "heroine" is necessary to a …

Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting And The Condition Of Women, Ludmila Volná

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting and the Condition of Women" Ludmila Volná presents a critical culture-based reading of Desai's novel Fasting, Feasting, a work that deals with the condition of women (not only) in India. Volná analyzes both female and the male sensitivities in the novel where Desai makes use of a double symbolic of food expressed throughout the novel by (not only literal) hunger. In Volná's view, Desai's Hindu imagery of sun/fire as patriarchal power and water, which, as the counterpart of the sun and fire, represents recognition of women’s condition and a possible way to …

The Staged Self In Mary Carleton's Autobiographical Narratives, Geraldine Wagner

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "The Staged Self in Mary Carleton's Autobiographical Narratives," Geraldine Wagner examines Mary Carleton's use of romance and picaresque modes of self-representation to appropriate and redefine counterfeiting as a legitimate means to identity. The most notorious female criminal of the English Restoration, Mary Carleton, captured the public's imagination in 1662 when she stood trial for bigamy. Although acquitted on insufficient evidence, the allegation that she was a common shoemaker's wife counterfeiting the identity of a German noblewoman spawned a war of pamphlets of competing biographical accounts between Carleton and her detractors. Wagner argues that these attempts to confine …

Globalization, Ideology, And Narratives Of The East Asian Financial Crisis, Ezra Yoo-Hyeok Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Globalization, Ideology, and Narratives of the East Asian Financial Crisis," Ezra Yoo-Hyeok Lee analyzes the narratives of the East Asian financial "crisis" in 1997-98, arguing that it took place in the course of restructuring the world economy so that the first world would keep its hegemonic power. The East Asian financial crisis spread rapidly to the rest of the globe and in this urgent situation, the IMF: International Monetary Fund played its now typical role as a "savior of the world." Before the financial crisis, the East Asian economy was considered to be an exemplary model from …

Watsuji And Deleuze And Guattari In The Climate Of Culture, Seth Jacobowitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Seth Jacobowitz, in his paper "Watsuji and Deleuze and Guattari in the Climate of Culture," analyzes theories of cultural properties in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus alongside Watsuji Tetsuro's prewar Climate and Culture. At stake in these investigations is the status of the West as a universalizing particular ratified by these authors in the instance of its own critique. We are confronted on the one hand with Deleuze and Guattari's exoticized, Orientalist promise of an alternative economy of meaning derived from the Balinese term for "plateau" and the morphology of the rhizome and, on the other hand, …

Dmesh: Incorporating Practical Directional Antennas In Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks, Saumitra M. Das, Himabindu Pucha, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Y. Charlie Hu, Dimitrios Peroulis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been proposed as an effective solution for ubiquitous lastmile broadband access. Three key factors that affect the usability of WMNs are high throughput, costeffectiveness and ease of deployability. Recent research has focused on increasing WMN throughput assuming the use of multiple radios equipped with omnidirectional antennas accompanied with channel assignment to enable frequency separation between contending transmissions. Compared to omni antennas, directional antennas offer spatial separation between contending transmissions and have the potential to further enhance the throughput of WMNs. In this paper, we propose DMesh, a WMN architecture that combines spatial separation from directional …

Distance Estimation Algorithm For Stereo Pair Images, Edwin Tjandranegara

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Various algorithms have been proposed for estimating camera distance from objects in digital stereo pair videos and images. Existing algorithms assume that digital images were taken with pan and tilt cameras or assume that the angles between the cameras and the object are known. The algorithm that we are proposing has the ability to calculate distance from the camera plane to the object plane, where the cameras do not have the ability to pan and tilt nor the angles between the cameras and the object are known beforehand.

Low-Power-Level Passive Harmonic Reradiator For Sensor Nodes, Jia-Han Li, Hua-Tsai Chen, Srinivas V. Vanjari, Mark R. Bell, James V. Krogmeier, Kevin J. Webb

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Sensor nodes distributed over a large area can be used to collect environmental information such as chemical pollution. The sensed information can be communicated to a central location, without significant power consumption by the sensor nodes, by utilizing backscatter modulation. In this approach, a central source such as a radar illuminates the sensor nodes by microwave radiation. The reradiation from each sensor can be modulated by switching a load on the sensor antenna. This permits design of low-power sensors having a long battery life. To avoid interference at the radar from unwanted objects, harmonic reradiation can be used on the …

Sample-Based Cameras For Fast Accurate Reflections, Voicu Popescu, Elisha Sacks, Chunhui Mei

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase Links Nf-Κb To Pge2 In Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Altered Fibroblast In-Vitro Wound Healing, Yi Jia, John Turek

Department of Basic Medical Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: This study investigated mechanisms of altered fibroblast collagen production induced by polyunsaturated fatty acids. 3T3-Swiss fibroblasts were grown in medium containing either eicosapentaenoic or arachidonic acid. The effects of nuclear factor-kappaB activation by lipopolysaccharide on inducible nitric oxide synthase, nitric oxide, prostaglandin E2, collagen production, and in-vitro wound healing were studied. Results: Eicosapentaenoic acid treated cells produced less prostaglandin E2 but had increased inducible nitric oxide synthase expression, nitric oxide production, collagen formation, and recoverage area during in-vitro wound healing than cells treated with arachidonic acid. Activation of nuclear factor-kappaB with lipopolysaccharide increased inducible nitric oxide synthase expression, the …

Slot: Shortened Loop Internet Transport Using Overlay Networks, Himabindu Pucha, Y. Charlie Hu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Overlay routing has emerged as a promising approach to mitigating many problems with Internet routing, such as improving the reliability of Internet paths and supporting multicast communication. As overlay routing is gaining wider acceptance, we argue that it is time t o investigate how overlay networks can benefit Internet transport. This paper presents Slot, a framework that leverages overlay networks to improve the throughput of feedback-based transport protocols. Slot exploits the observation that the throughput of feedback-based transport protocols (e.g., TCP, XCP, VCP, DCCP) is inversely proportional to the length of their end-to-end feedback control loop, and effectively shortens an …

Po2v: Network Layer Position Verification In Multi-Hopo Wireless Networks, Xizoxin Wu, Cristina Nita-Rotaru

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Functional Analysis And Comparative Genomics Of Expressed Sequence Tags From The Lycophyte Selaginella Moellendorffii, Jing-Ke Weng, Milos Tanurdzic, Clint Chapple

Department of Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Background

The lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii is a member of one of the oldest lineages of vascular plants on Earth. Fossil records show that the lycophyte clade arose 400 million years ago, 150–200 million years earlier than angiosperms, a group of plants that includes the well-studied flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. S. moellendorffii has a genome size of approximately 100 Mbp, as small or smaller than that of A. thaliana. S. moellendorffii has the potential to provide significant comparative information to better understand the evolution of vascular plants.

Results

We sequenced 2181 Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) from a S. moellendorffii …

What Do We Need From Our Digital Librarians?, Michael Breaks

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

No abstract provided.

O-Zone: Institutional Repositories And The Ontario Scholars Portal, Alan Darnell

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

No abstract provided.

Technical Intelligence In An S-T Organization: A Perspective From An Information End-User, Blaise Champagne

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

No abstract provided.

Public Goods And Open Access, David Shulenburger

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

No abstract provided.

Redundant-Reader Elimination In Rfid Systems, Bogdan Carbunar, Murali Krishna Ramanathan, Mehmet Koyuturk, Christoph M. Hoffmann, Ananth Y. Grama

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

A Novel Hybrid Heat Sink Using Phase Change Materials For Transient Thermal Management Of Electronics, Shankar Krishnan, S V. Garimella, S. S. Kang

CTRC Research Publications

A hybrid heat sink concept which combines passive and active cooling approaches is proposed. The hybrid heat sink is essentially a plate fin heat sink with the tip immersed in a phase change material (PCM). The exposed area of the fins dissipates heat during periods when high convective cooling is available. When the air cooling is reduced, the heat is absorbed by the PCM. The governing conservation equations are solved using a finite-volume method on orthogonal, rectangular grids. An enthalpy method is used for modeling the melting/re-solidification phenomena. Results from the analysis elucidate the thermal performance of these hybrid heat …

Biz Of Acq -- Issues In Scholarly Communication: Creating Your Own Blog, William Walsh, Tim Daniels

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002, Lan Dong

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Lan Dong explores in her paper, "Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002" the recent landscape of Chinese gay cinema through discussing the following three feature films: Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), Zhang Yuan's East Palace, West Palace (1996), and Stanley Kwan's Lan Yu (2001). The grouping derives from the concern that they all set their stories in Beijing. Using the capital city as a cultural background, the films display how queer is perceived in China from the 1920s to the end of the 1990s. All three storylines portray the characters' struggle to recognize their particular identity as gay men. In …

Introduction To New Papers In American Cultural Studies, Joanne Morreale, P. David Marshall

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Harry Potter And The Susceptible Child Audience, Kara Lynn Andersen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Kara Lynn Andersen, in her paper "Harry Potter and the Susceptible Child Audience," argues for a rethinking of assumptions of child audiences as passive readers and viewers through an analysis of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Andersen argues that instead of categorizing children as passive and homogenous subjects of analysis, they should instead be incorporated as participants in the discourse about children's books and films. Although frequently figured as especially susceptible to the affects of advertising and other media, young Harry Potter fans are particularly visible as not only consumers of the texts, but creators of new texts. Using work done …