Broad Field Of Study Research Articles

MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN: POSTHUMANISM IN LITERARY DISCOURSE

“What makes us human?” Throughout time, people have been preoccupied with this question, believing that humans are at the pinnacle of the world. Today, technology blurs the boundaries of what is considered “natural” versus “enhanced,” leading to a fallout with the limited views of humanism and modernity. This paper explores the many views on posthumanism that have been established by several thinkers to attempt to understand the concept. An illustrative text is then used to elucidate the implication of the posthumanist thought in literature. Posthumanist themes are prevalent in science fiction, embodying people’s collective anxiety toward the looming future of humanity, such as in the works of Philip K. Dick. The story “The Electric Ant” poses existential questions on the nature of reality and our place in it, with highly posthumanist themes such as the presence or assimilation of robots in human societies. Posthumanism is as yet a complex and broad field of study, challenging our notions of what it means to be human and alive, and making us ask questions about how the present and future of technology could shape our human existence.

Stability analysis framework for isolated microgrids with energy resources integrated using voltage source converters

Integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) enables the development of microgrids, which opens up a broad field of study. However, the dynamic behaviour of these energy resources presents challenges in these new electric systems. The stability of systems with high penetration of DERs is a developing research topic, where enhancement strategies are typically focused on specific issues, while general approaches often present several challenges without testing scenarios. In this document, an analysis of several stability issues is presented and tested in an islanded system based on the CIGRE low voltage benchmark. The conclusions obtained are noteworthy and propose further discussion and research, to enhance the understanding and future study of islanded microgrid stability with only converter-integrated energy resources.

The “Karabakh – Armenia” Theme in the Iconography of Armenian Identity

The images and written formulas depicted on banners and posters are a vivid manifestation of national identity and tend to appear and reappear in abundant quantities in times of societal crises. In this sense, the iconography of the Karabakh Movement represents a rich and broad field of study. What is distinctive about the posters created during the Karabakh Movement is that a great majority did not simply proclaim the programmatic ideas of certain parties or political trends but rather expressed the people’s concerns, moods and wishes and their interpretations of events as they unfolded. The posters and banners of the Movement manifested in varying genres and revealed diversity in their content. They were the product of both Soviet and nationalist mentality. The theme “Karabakh-Armenia” had many different manifestations in the iconography of the Karabakh movement, such as quotations and the creation of posters using or based on “quote thinking”; unification of Karabakh with Armenia as a solution for the Karabakh issue; the theme of Mother Armenia and child-Karabakh; “Karabakh is ours”; manifestations of solidarity with the people of Karabakh; Karabakh and Armenia as one entity. This article aims to present and analyse those banners and posters as manifestations of national identity.

Illuminating insights into subjectivity: Q as a methodology in applied linguistics research

Abstract Applied linguistics (AL) is a broad field of study that often concerns subjective domains such as beliefs, opinions, perspectives, values and emotions. Q methodology (Q), a mixed methods approach to phenomenological and typological inquiry, is specifically designed to help researchers better understand individuals’ subjective viewpoints. Although Q has existed for eight decades, it rarely intersects with language-related research. This article offers AL researchers an overview of Q and examples of its application. The overview covers its brief history and underlying theoretical concepts. The application is illustrated using a case exemplar that investigates language learners’ perspectives regarding enjoyment in online learning. The advantages and limitations of Q are also discussed. There is plenty of room for AL researchers to advance Q, both as a standalone methodology and as an accompaniment to other methods.

Bacterial approaches to sensing and responding to respiration and respiration metabolites.

Bacterial respiration of diverse substrates is a primary contributor to the diversity of life. Respiration also drives alterations in the geosphere and tethers ecological nodes together. It provides organisms with a means to dissipate reductants and generate potential energy in the form of an electrochemical gradient. Mechanisms have evolved to sense flux through respiratory pathways and sense the altered concentrations of respiration substrates or byproducts. These genetic regulatory systems promote efficient utilization of respiration substrates, as well as fine-tune metabolism to promote cellular fitness and negate the accumulation of toxic byproducts. Many bacteria can respire one or more chemicals, and these regulatory systems promote the prioritization of high-energy metabolites. Herein, we focus on regulatory paradigms and discuss systems that sense the concentrations of respiration substrates and flux through respiratory pathways. This is a broad field of study, and therefore we focus on key fundamental and recent developments and highlight specific systems that capture the diversity of sensing mechanisms.

Linguistic diversity and doctoral assessment: exploring examiner treatment of candidate language

ABSTRACT Overseas students who have learned English as a second or foreign language (L2) form a prominent subgroup of research students in Australian universities. However, there is a paucity of research exploring the linguistic experiences of this population in connection with thesis examination and in comparison with first language users of English (L1). Drawing on a two-phase design, we utilised an archived corpus of de-identified PhD examiner reports (n = 2117) that incorporated demographic data on candidate language background to determine if there were significant differences in examiner emphasis between L1 and L2 English speakers in three Broad Fields of Study (BFOS): Health; Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS); Science and Engineering. We found some significant differences in content emphases in examiner comments between L1 and L2 candidates by BFOS but no significant differences in examiner recommendation or committee decision between these groups. This suggested examiners were accommodating language differences. To explore this more closely, we identified 27 reports where examiners had surmised an L2 background and examined these informed by Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT). The case analyses confirmed that rather than rejecting or responding negatively to non-standard language, overall, examiners were accommodating of unconventional style (where meaning is not impaired) taking considerable effort to instruct the candidate in instances where intelligibility was obstructed. The findings are particularly apposite in light of widening postgraduate participation by students from linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Multi-criteria decision making involving uncertain information via fuzzy ranking and fuzzy aggregation functions

Many advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are based on decision making, especially in uncertain settings. Due to its possible applications, decision making is currently a broad field of study in many areas like Computation, Economics and Business Management. The first techniques appeared in scenarios where information was modeled by real numbers. In all cases, one of the key steps in such processes was the summarization of the available information into a few values that helped the decision maker to complete this task. In this paper, we introduce a novel multi-criteria decision making methodology in the fuzzy context in which weights and experts’ opinions (may be translated by linguistic labels) are stated as triangular fuzzy numbers. To do that, we take advantage of a recently presented fuzzy binary relation whose properties are according to human intuition and we carry out a study of the main properties that an aggregation function (a mapping to sum up information) must satisfy in the fuzzy framework. The presented procedure makes a final decision based on parabolic fuzzy numbers (not triangular). And this will be shown in an illustrative example.

Los salvajes del Sur

Reconociendo el papel de la migración en el proceso de modernización de Uruguay, este artículo identifica las influencias que tuvieron los artistas migrantes durante la primera mitad del siglo XX. Basado en información secundaria, rastrea sus permutaciones expresionistas en los campos de arquitectura, danza y teatro, literatura, con especial énfasis en la pintura. Lejos de ser concluyente, el análisis se aborda como un paso exploratorio hacia un campo de estudio más amplio.

Combining a Computed Laminography Approach with Tomographic Analysis for a Study of Weld Joints

The quality of a weld joint is subject to several factors, from material characteristics to environmental conditions. Its mechanical behavior is a broad field of study with specific industrial standards. Within a study of a weld joint, we employed a combination of a computed laminography [1] approach with tomographic analysis in order to extract and analyze specimens that were afterwards tested to assess the welding stress-strain and fracture characteristics. The main objective was to study the effect of surface porosity-type flaws. For this purpose, instead of a blind extraction of specimens from a welded block, we proceeded to a pre-identification of large porosity defects and the specimens were then cut and machined such that the flaws would be situated on the surface of test samples. The positions of these flaws were extracted with the laminography approach and it was crosschecked with measurements with an ultrasound testing technique. Computed tomography was employed as a characterization step before the stress-strain and fracture tests.

Critical assessment 30: Grain growth – Unresolved issues

ABSTRACTGrain growth is a broad field of study that covers several scientifically and technically interesting characteristics. Normal grain growth kinetics and its associated parabolic growth law and self-similar size distributions, grain boundary pinning, abnormal grain growth, the effect of triple junctions and quadruple points as well as grain growth in thin films are the most important current topics of grain growth research. In this critical assessment of grain growth in metals, we present and discuss some of the most important unresolved issues that have been a subject of research for many years.

Traditional Enterprise Business Intelligence Software Compared to Software as a Service Business Intelligence

IntroductionBusiness Intelligence is a broad field of study. The major thrust of business intelligence theory analyzes certain factors to make highquality decisions. These factors include customers, competitors, business partners, economic environment and internal operations. Business Intelligence has the power to change the way people work, so that enterprises can compete more effectively and efficiently.A successful business intelligence solutions and successful implementation holds the key to the technological innovations together with the people, processes and culture of an organization to achieve a competitive and profitable BI strategy.Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of acquiring operational data and the use of this data in order to make the best business decisions. BI software takes the information bulk of the operational data sources of an enterprise, integrates and analyzes them and presents timely verdicts in the form of reports, alerts and dashboards.These reports, alerts and dashboards provide a more accurate and actionable view of the situation of a company.The success of a BI solution is ultimately in how well it helps both business and technical users in an organization to meet their missioncritical objectives: meeting or exceeding the revenue figures, looking for ways to reduce costs across the organization and maximize profitability by identifying the most profitable customers, products, services or programs. In fact, a BI solution should be able to identify otherwise unknown situations.Within an organization a BI solution helps users meet the following critical business objectives: meeting or exceeding the revenue figures, maximizing profitability by identifying the most profitable programs, looking for ways to reduce costs across the organization, creating a 360-degree view directed to customers.A business intelligence solution allows business teams the correlation of data across the enterprise to understand and to synthesize comprehensive analysis of the results, trends and expected results in order to understand the implications of this insight on corporate goals. BI users have an understanding of what is happening and what future actions need to be taken.2.Business Intelligence SolutionsBusiness intelligence (BI) solutions have already proven their worth a lot of times in the past. The reason for their popularity can be explained by various new developments.Especially the following trends play a major role: on the one hand, the emergence of new valuable and relevant data sources, on the other hand, a new generation of BI visualization tools based on HTML5 and JavaScript, and finally the removal of many traditional ERP functionalities and the growth of new enterprise capabilities in the cloud.Here are a few questions that can be easily answered by BI:Sales and marketing issues:* Which customers does a company want to target group?* What caused the change in the pipeline?* Which are a company's most profitable campaigns per region?* What's the turnover after an announcement of a new product release?* What is the most profitable source of revenue and how has it changed over time?Operational Questions* Which vendors have the best provision of time and budget?* How much additional staff is needed per store during the holidays?* What order fulfillment process is highly inefficient?Financial Questions* What are the costs for new products?* What is the expected annual profit / loss on the basis of current marketing and sales activities predictions?* What are the forecasts compared to the annual plan?* What are the current trends in cash flow, accounts payable and accounts receivable, and how are they comparing to the plan?Business Performance Questions* What are the main risk factors affecting the company's ability to meet the annual profit goals? …

Emerging evidence for beneficial macrophage functions in atherosclerosis and obesity-induced insulin resistance.

The discovery that obesity promotes macrophage accumulation in visceral fat led to the emergence of a new field of inquiry termed “immunometabolism”. This broad field of study was founded on the premise that inflammation and the corresponding increase in macrophage number and activity was a pathologic feature of metabolic diseases. There is abundant data in both animal and human studies that supports this assertation. Established adverse effects of inflammation in visceral fat include decreased glucose and fatty acid uptake, inhibition of insulin signaling, and ectopic triglyceride accumulation. Likewise, in the atherosclerotic plaque, macrophage accumulation and activation results in plaque expansion and destabilization. Despite these facts, there is an accumulating body of evidence that macrophages also have beneficial functions in both atherosclerosis and visceral obesity. Potentially beneficial functions that are common to these different contexts include the regulation of efferocytosis, lipid buffering, and anti-inflammatory effects. Autophagy, the process by which cytoplasmic contents are delivered to the lysosome for degradation, is integral to many of these protective biologic functions. The macrophage utilizes autophagy as a molecular tool to maintain tissue integrity and homeostasis at baseline (e.g., bone growth) and in the face of ongoing metabolic insults (e.g., fasting, hypercholesterolemia, obesity). Herein, we highlight recent evidence demonstrating that abrogation of certain macrophage functions, in particular autophagy, exacerbates both atherosclerosis and obesity-induced insulin resistance. Insulin signaling through mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a crucial regulatory node that links nutrient availability to macrophage autophagic flux. A more precise understanding of the metabolic substrates and triggers for macrophage autophagy may allow therapeutic manipulation of this pathway. These observations underscore the complexity of the field “immunometabolism”, validate its importance, and raise many fascinating and important questions for future study.

Fission yeast meets a legend in Kobe: report of the Eighth International Fission Yeast Meeting.

The Eighth International Fission Yeast Meeting, which was held at Ikuta Shrine Hall in Kobe, Japan, from 21 to 26 June 2015, was attended by 327 fission yeast researchers from 25 countries (190 overseas and 137 domestic participants). At this meeting, 124 talks were held and 145 posters were presented. In addition, newly developed database tools were introduced to the community during a workshop. Researchers shared cutting-edge knowledge across broad fields of study, ranging from molecules to evolution, derived from the superior model organism commonly used within the fission yeast community. Intensive discussions and constructive suggestions generated in this meeting will surely advance the understanding of complex biological systems in fission yeast, extending to general eukaryotes.

Development Sociology at the Subnational Scale

Sociologists have long studied subnational development across the United States focusing on state and market forces that contribute to spatial inequality and uneven development. Subnational research is central to development sociology's concern with the present neoliberal stage of capitalism and to numerous theoretical, substantive, and policy issues that revolve around poverty and prosperity within the nation. Yet the body of work faces a number of challenges. Research is fragmented and its potential for building broader development sociology overlooked. We provide a critical analysis of this research tradition focusing on its theoretical development and identifying a wave of shifts in economic structure and the state that require new engagement. Our analysis raises challenges for development sociology as a broader field of study. Profound state and market changes are unfolding within the United States but they remain under-theorized with implications for limiting progress in the field as a whole. We identify a series of questions that offer promising directions for future research.

History and philology at the Russian Academy of Sciences: The past decade

The Division of Historical and Philological Sciences was created slightly more than ten years ago following the reorganization of two divisions of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Historical and philological sciences have played an important role at the Academy since its creation. The foundations for the study and development of the Russian ethnic and, more broadly, Russian national culture were laid in the works of historians and philologists. This article presents the current status of this broad field of study.

INTERNATIONAL LAW, DOMESTIC LENSES

This article makes the case for greater attention to be given to the role of national legal culture in the making and practice of international law. The merits of this contested notion as a tool for gaining new insights are discussed, as is the legal cultural approach embedded in the broader field of study known as “comparative international law”. In an effort to demonstrate the utility of engaging with this concept, the focus turns to the inner legal culture of international law, which is composed of lawyers, judges and other professionals. It is argued that there are two factors of influence which allow for domestic elements to seep into international law. The first relates to individuals, via the inculcation of parochial values, whereas the second takes on a structural dimension, through inter alia the general principles of law and the “equitable geographical representation” requirement found in the statutes of many intergovernmental bodies. This theoretical framework is subsequently applied to the International Court of Justice, a suitable case study on account of it being a meeting place of various juridical traditions. At the individual level, judges and counsel appearing before the ICJ are considered. As regards the structural level, certain institutional features conducive to domestic influences are highlighted. Finally, the article identifies and briefly discusses three themes in the jurisprudence of the ICJ where national legal cultures have left their mark: analogies to municipal law, the manner and style in which the outcome of cases are justified and the debates surrounding the standard of proof.

University Transitions and Gender: From Choice of Studies to Academic Career Development

Based on the results of the authors' research using a case study of a Spanish university, the sociological component of gender is an important factor in building transitions at university. When the authors refer to university transitions they are talking about two periods. Firstly, they refer to the transition of undergraduate students from upper secondary education. The authors detect differences in the choices of studies, in the identification of professional models and in the university admission process. Secondly, they refer to the transition from research grant-holders to teaching and research staff. They explore the construction of social expectations and representations that research grant-holders make during their transitions to teaching and research staff. These two transition points are connected through the gender component, because in both, the authors have found gender differences that shape the transitions to a type of discourse and of behaviour. Therefore, university transitions are a broad field of study from a gender perspective.

2D Simulation Flue Implementing the Lattice-Boltzmann Method

Currently in the process of engineering, but increasingly implemented simulation methods since they are an economical and feasible to predict the behavior of some variable you wish to benefit. The problem of fluid simulation is a broad field of study, traditionally in this area are implemented domain discretization methods, volumes, differences or finite elements (Computational Fluid Dynamics), in this work, a different approach where the discretization is made on the physical properties of fluid and the fluid for reconstruction from its microscopic properties, simulating these, propagating Boltzmann distribution functions for the grid of nodes, this set is comprised of a fluid group of nodes, nodes fluid the border and nodes structure, docked the method to the boundary conditions necessary to simulate Glycerol in a pipe.

Generation Tourism: towards a common identity

The purpose of this article is to highlight the implications of the indiscipline of tourism academia for a new generation of tourism academics. Generation Tourism is characterised by scholars with a multi-disciplinary education associated with a broad field of study and commonly considered to lack the advantages of a discipline-focused education with its strong theoretical and methodological foundations. The problem this article addresses relates to how new generations of scholars and their views on knowledge creation achieve ascendancy in ways that move on from existing paradigms and earlier cohorts of scholars. Our main argument is that Generation Tourism scholars would benefit from a more clearly developed and common academic identity. To begin the critical conversation around the identity of Generation Tourism we outline five possible points of departure. These points are: (1) learning from historical developments in parent disciplines; (2) spearheading inter-disciplinary scholarship; (3) working towards theoretical developments; (4) embracing mediating methodologies and (5) forming tourism nodes and networks. Recognising these as starting points rather than final statements, we hope that the conversation about Generation Tourism identity will continue in other forums.

On-line anomaly detection and resilience in classifier ensembles

Detection of anomalies is a broad field of study, which is applied in different areas such as data monitoring, navigation, and pattern recognition. In this paper we propose two measures to detect anomalous behaviors in an ensemble of classifiers by monitoring their decisions; one based on Mahalanobis distance and another based on information theory. These approaches are useful when an ensemble of classifiers is used and a decision is made by ordinary classifier fusion methods, while each classifier is devoted to monitor part of the environment. Upon detection of anomalous classifiers we propose a strategy that attempts to minimize adverse effects of faulty classifiers by excluding them from the ensemble. We applied this method to an artificial dataset and sensor-based human activity datasets, with different sensor configurations and two types of noise (additive and rotational on inertial sensors). We compared our method with two other well-known approaches, generalized likelihood ratio (GLR) and One-Class Support Vector Machine (OCSVM), which detect anomalies at data/feature level.We found that our method is comparable with GLR and OCSVM. The advantages of our method compared to them is that it avoids monitoring raw data or features and only takes into account the decisions that are made by their classifiers, therefore it is independent of sensor modality and nature of anomaly. On the other hand, we found that OCSVM is very sensitive to the chosen parameters and furthermore in different types of anomalies it may react differently. In this paper we discuss the application domains which benefit from our method.