Broken Bit Research Articles

Putting “the broken bits together”: A qualitative exploration of the impact of communication changes in dementia

IntroductionCommunication is an area of health and functioning that is profoundly affected by dementia. While it is known that people living with dementia and their care partners experience disruptions to daily activities and social engagement, detailed knowledge about the lived impact of dementia-related communication changes is lacking. This study sought an in-depth understanding of the lived experience of dementia-related communication changes and the associated impact, needs, and strategies. MethodsAs part of an overarching participatory design study, a qualitative (interpretive description) exploration was undertaken with people living with dementia and their care partners. Data from semi-structured interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. ResultsWe interviewed 13 people living with dementia and 21 care partners and drew three themes and 10 subthemes from the interviews. The first theme illustrates how dementia changes communication which in turn changes life; the second captures the impact of changes on people living with dementia and care partners emotionally and in the context of relationships; and the third describes some positive and constructive ways of moving forward with dementia-related communication changes. ConclusionsInterventions to enhance function, participation, and wellbeing for people living with dementia and their care partners need to encompass support for communication changes. There is a need to ensure that people living with dementia feel dignified and respected during communication, and that care partners and inclusive communities are educated, trained, and supported to facilitate communication.

A Correlation Context-Driven Method for Sea Fog Detection in Meteorological Satellite Imagery

Sea fog detection is a challenging and essential issue in satellite remote sensing. Although conventional threshold methods and deep learning methods can achieve pixel-level classification, it is difficult to distinguish ambiguous boundaries and thin structures from the background. Considering the correlations between neighbor pixels and the affinities between superpixels, a correlation context-driven method for sea fog detection is proposed in this letter, which mainly consists of a two-stage superpixel-based fully convolutional network (SFCNet), named SFCNet. A fully connected Conditional Random Field (CRF) is utilized to model the dependencies between pixels. To alleviate the problem of high cloud occlusion, an attentive Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is implemented for image enhancement by exploiting contextual information. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method achieves 91.65% mIoU and obtains more refined segmentation results, performing well in detecting fogs in small, broken bits and weak contrast thin structures, as well as detects more obscured parts.

“Broken Bits of Color in the Dirt”

AbstractThis essay examines the numerous critical claims of “timeliness” around the recently recovered novel Romance in Marseille as well as Claude McKay’s own numerous commitments and challenges as they emerge therein: the multiple and enduring afterlives of slavery, the Bolshevik Revolution and the burgeoning of its stiflingly bureaucratic Thermidor under Stalin, the various theoretical and programmatic complications that issues of race and gender posed for international socialism alongside the promises and disappointments of emancipatory politics writ large. However, in attempting to adjudicate such problematics of difference, McKay also provides the outlines of a dialectical “Black Intersectional International,” thereby gesturing toward a “commonism” of the quayside.

Effect of PET bottle pieces and waste wrapper fibers on concrete compressive strength

In this study, the main goal was to look into the effect on concrete’s compressive strength by the addition of used PET bottle pieces & wrapper strips collected from waste generated on railway stations. To achieve the target compressive strength for M50 grade concrete, strips were cut from waste wrappers and shredded polyethylene terephthalate (PET) pieces from PET bottles were used. Waste wrapper strips were cut down in three different aspect ratios and four different proportions, along with differing proportions of shredded PET bottle pieces. After 28 days of curing, compressive strength was determined and it is observed that the compressive strength of concrete was decreased by the inclusion of wrapper strips &PET bottle pieces in different ways. Mix ID M4 i.e. 5 × 30 mm, 7.5 gm wrapper &50 gm PET bottle pieces offer better performance relative to the other Mix IDs as compared to the control mix at 28 days. Therefore, 5 X 30 mm size strips of wrappers along with 50gm of PET bottle pieces are the best mix for the compressive strength of concrete compared with other mixes. In the case of proportioning different sizes of shredded wrappers used along with PET bottle pieces, improved results are obtained relative to all other Mix IDs as relative with the 28- day control mix. Multiple size strip of (PET) wrapper with a mixture of (5 × 20 mm, 2.5 gm), (5 × 30 mm, 3 gm), (5 × 40 mm, 2 gm), and 25 gm of broken bits of PET bottles is the better combination for concrete compressive strength than any other combination.

Thermochemistry of the lignin broken bits

The hydroxy- and methoxy substituted benzaldehydes are the simplest broken bits from the lignin valorization technologies. Comprehensive thermochemical study of these compounds was performed including vapour pressure measurements, combustion and differential scanning calorimetry. A large number of primary experimental results on vapour pressures, phase transitions, and enthalpies of formation have been collected from the literature and evaluated with help of empirical and quantum-chemical methods. The consistent sets of thermodynamic data were utilised for developing the simple GA method for prediction of enthalpies of vaporization and enthalpies of formation of di-substituted benzenes in the gas phase. Parameters of GA procedures are expected to be transferable for prediction of thermochemical properties of poly-hydroxy and poly-methoxy substituted benzenes appearing in reaction products during of the lignin valorization.

Evaluation of drilling hydraulic calculation to the ability of bottom hole cleaning

In drilling operation there are two important matters that must be considered, which are the pumps and drilling fluid rheology that are influencing hydraulics drilling system. The major function of drilling fluid is to lift the drill cutting to the surface and still maintain the drilling hole to avoid an encounter. Evaluation of hydraulics drilling for bottom hole cleaning will count the parameter success which influence in removal of cutting to the surface for bottom hole cleaning and optimization drilling calculation hydraulics. The velocity of drilling fluid in annular, the flow that is formed and the ability of bottom hole cleaning are highly influenced by specifications of mud pump as a resource power for mud to flow that also will determine how the value of flow rate can be circulated. Mud rheology, PV, YP and MW will influence the performance of mud to carry cutting on drilling operation. The penetration to formation rock will make the broken bits of solid material removed from a borehole drilled by bit and resulting the drill cuttings. These cuttings could settle on the bottom of borehole so the main purpose of drilling fluid is to carry the cuttings to the surface, besides the drilling fluid also protecting borehole condition from any drilling problems. This evaluation is using Power Law Model for calculate pressure losses, drilling hydraulic optimization and also observe the parameter of Cutting Transport Ratio (Ft), Cutting Concentration (Ca), Cutting Carrying Index (CCI) and Particle Bed Index (PBI). The optimization results from Bit Hydraulic Horse Power (BHHP) method produce significant changes which are percentage horse power delivered to bit (%HHP) increasing to 53.17 – 54.79 % from actual condition which only ranges 5 – 51 %. Q optimum is very influential on the value of bit hydraulic horse power (BHHP) and surface horse power (HPS) that provide more optimized power to pump the mud with minimize the effect of pressure loss.

Comparative analysis of two-phase flow in sinusoidal channel of different geometric configurations with application to PEMFC

Abstract The droplet dynamics inside a sinusoidal channel for PEMFC (polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell) are investigated numerically using the VOF (volume of fluid) method. This study is done for three geometrically different channels corresponding to various non-dimensional sinusoidal distances (50, 25, 12.5, 16.7 and 8.3). The effects of key parameters like sinusoidal distance (pitch-amplitude ratio), radius of curvature and wall contact angle on the droplet removal in the flow channel are investigated. The performance of the sinusoidal as compared to the conventional channel is studied based on droplet removal rate and GDL (gas diffusion layer) surface water coverage. It is found that the droplet removal rate increases with increasing sinusoidal distance and wall contact angle. In addition, decrease in the sinusoidal distance results in a significant reduction in the average droplet speed and gas diffusion layer surface water coverage. It was also observed that broken bits of the droplet stuck on the wall corners accrued with a reduction in the wall contact angle. The curvy nature of the side walls generally induces a secondary flow effect which would be most beneficial in enhanced reactant diffusion and cell performance. It is suggested that the sinusoidal distance and wall contact angle effect on two-phase flow in a channel is highly significant. As such, needs to be considered for water management in sinusoidal channels.

The Stickiness of Instagram: Digital Labor and Postslavery Legacies in Kara Walker's "A Subtlety"

The Stickiness of InstagramDigital Labor and Postslavery Legacies in Kara Walker's "A Subtlety" Sarah Brophy (bio) From May 10 to July 6, 2014, the African American artist Kara Walker's "A Subtlety, or The Marvelous Sugar Baby" existed as a temporary, site-specific installation at the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, New York (Figure 1). A maximalist sculpture of polystyrene foam coated in thirty tons of bleached white sugar donated by the Domino Sugar Corporation, standing thirty-five feet tall, stretching seventy-five long, and featuring a face resembling the artist's own, Walker's sphinx-shaped nude was sexualized in ways that evoked "Hottentot," "Jezebel," and "mammy" stereotypes. It symbolized the slave system and the sugar industry's massive appropriation and mystification of black women's labor, including but not limited to sexual, domes-tic, and caring labor. While Walker's sugar sphinx has been extensively photographed and written about, equally significant were the fifteen five-foot tall figures of laboring boys—some made of molasses and resin, others of hard candy—who surrounded her, carrying baskets and field produce. In another ugly image of exploited labor, their decomposition in the heat led Walker to heap up the broken bits of their bodies in the baskets of the few boys who continued to stand (Figure 2). "A Subtlety" thus offered a dazzling iconography of the ongoing legacies of the slavery economy and the continuing effacement—the white-washing—of its brutality. This article explores and assesses the pivotal roles of self-inscription, mediation, and audience participation for Walker's project. I focus on the popularity and impact of the hashtag #karawalkerdomino, which saw six thousand user-generated images posted on social media platforms (primarily on Instagram but also on Twitter and Facebook) during the first two days of the exhibition (Ovation Staff)—a number that [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Installation View of "A Subtlety." Copyright Andrew Burton/Getty Images. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Installation View of "A Subtlety." Copyright Andrew Burton/Getty Images. [End Page 2] eventually rose to more than twenty-five thousand posts (Creative Time). "A Subtlety" directly solicited the making and sharing of vernacular digital photographic images by visitors, a strategy informed by twenty-first-century social media outreach trends in the museum sector (Kaufman) and by relational aesthetics, that participatory, audience-oriented mobilization of the avant-garde that has been a mainstay of art world institutions since the mid-1990s (Balzer 66–67). Through physical signs instructing visitors "not to touch the artwork" but instead to upload images on social media, #karawalkerdomino was built into the exhibition from the outset. Anticipated to be equipped with smart devices, visitors were invited, as the website reiterates, to "help build the Digital Sugar Baby, an interactive 3D version of Kara Walker's marvelous artwork! … This living tribute to Kara's work will evolve over the course of the exhibition. Visit this site each week to see its progress" (Creative Time). The implied premise was that no single shot could encompass an installation built on such an enormous scale, and so visitors' image-making would produce a composite whole from myriad points of view. The result was not only a digital version of the installation but also a successful promotional gambit directing traffic to the website and associated media accounts. The curated online exhibition of "A Subtlety" hosted on the website of the nonprofit arts organization Creative Time, produced by the digital entrepreneurs of its subcontractor Makeable, drew together 17,315 of the Instagram contributions, together with 1,788 from Twitter and 83 from Facebook (Creative Time). Highlighting what Walker has sardonically termed the exhibition's "ridiculously romantic angles" (qtd in Sutton), the selections that constitute the official 3D curated exhibition of "A Subtlety" emphasize the sublimity of the sphinx figure and a largely reverential attitude on the part of the audience. Produced through technological, cultural, and cognitive "filtering" processes that conspicuously "remov[e] unwanted content or impurities" (Walker Rettberg 22), this version of the exhibition's online archive is accompanied by a more disturbing obverse, for the exhibition's main claim to fame...

Politics of the Maya Court: Hierarchy and Change in the Late Classic PeriodMortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul

Politics of the Maya Court: Hierarchy and Change in the Late Classic PeriodMortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul

How to Prepare Spider Sperm for Quantification

Females of most arthropod species mate with more than one male during their lifetime and can store sperm for extensive periods. Consequently, male adaptations to sperm competition and cryptic female choice are the main factors that determine paternity success. In order to understand the processes that lead to differential fertilization success, the relative number of sperm transferred and the number of sperm stored by the female need to be established. To this end, a reliable sperm counting procedure is required. We assessed the reliability and variability of sperm counts in the nuptial-gift-giving spider Pisaura mirabilis (Clerck, 1757) by comparing counts from the same sample and by comparing different storage treatments before sperm counts. We used male sperm storage organs (pedipalps) that were processed immediately after dissection, pedipalps fixed in 80% ethanol and stored at room temperature, and pedipalps that were frozen at -20°C, -40°C, -80°C. We further tested for an influence of the counting solution (CASY®ton versus saline-triton-x buffer) on reliability and variability. The sperm counting protocol resulted in homogeneous distribution of sperm over the counting chamber and highly correlated counts drawn from one sample. Although all treatments kept the sperm in a good state, the samples previously stored in ethanol contained many broken bits of material, which made the counting procedure considerably more time consuming. The buffer used had no effect on the homogeneity and number of sperm found. Whether and how the material was fixed had no significant effect on the average number of sperm found in the palps.

Only Ever Always by Penni Russon (review)

Reviewed by: Only Ever Always by Penni Russon Karen Coats Russon, Penni . Only Ever Always. Delacorte, 2013. [176p]. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-99119-6 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-74352-5 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-449-81668-4 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10. Rupert Brooke's poem "Doubt" makes a fitting epigraph for this story of two girls working through grief and loneliness on their way to hope and new beginnings. Thirteen-year-old Claire is reluctantly sorting through her old toys in preparation for the birth of a new cousin to her beloved uncle Charlie when she comes across the music box he gave her when she was born. She drifts off to sleep in the wake of memories and finds herself dreaming about a girl named Clara, whose world is post-apocalyptic and who lives by collecting broken bits of things to sell while trying to avoid the gang bosses who collect people to use for their own purposes. Clara makes a dangerous deal that allows her to cross over into Claire's realm to steal some life-saving medicine for her friend, and while there she steals Claire's music box; when Charlie dies, Claire's grief drives her deeper into Clara's world, where Clara is nursing a grief of her own as her friend dies and she is taken prisoner by one of the gang bosses. Making sense of the myriad connections and transpositions between Claire's and Clara's world requires a reliance on intuition more than logic; fortunately, Australian author Russon's richly poetic language encourages just such a reliance. The second and third-person narration of Claire's sections draws readers into her inner world as something slightly more than spectator, while Clara's street-inflected Aussie dialect invokes a sense of walking through a strange world with an intimate guide. The sadness of their broken circumstances is mitigated by their shared strength to bear life's inevitable losses. Give this to fans of David Almond who see magic behind the veil of the ordinary. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Beirut

For over thirty years now, Mr Abdel Halim Hicham has run a shop in the heart of Beirut's upmarket district of Hamra. On sale here is the woodwork inlaid with mother of pearl that he crafts by hand. Mr Hicham is a Lebanese artisan of a kind that is on the wane. He learned the trade at his father's knee and began work at the age of twelve. His is a family business, inherited through bloodline and Mr Hicham has a lifetime's knowledge of wood carving, of how to chisel the motehr of pearl into delicate, translucent shapes from broken bits of shell and how to inlay it carefully, in designs that are sometimes geometric and traditional, other times more flowing and dynamic. With utmost care, and slow precision, as if unaware of the passage of time, he glues each minute piece into the fragrant cedar wood of his country. Customers must wait until he is done. In fact, his show has more the air of a workshop, cluttered and used, the pieces of furniture, wall hangings and tabletops chaotically piled one on top of another. Some have collected dust and appear untouched for months. Others he polishes lovingly with a dirty rag dipped in turpentine. Mr Hicham keeps erratic hours. Often his shop is not open and potential customers can only peer in through the smudged window at the piles of inlaid woodwork inside. A handwritten message on the door cryptically says 'Call me', followed by a mobile number.

Recycling History

Review Article RECYCLING HISTORY CARLA NAPPI University of British Columbia, Canada VALERIE HANSEN, The Silk Road: A New History. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xi z 304 pp. We historians of China talk a lot about the importance of material culture. Bowls, shoes, objects made of iron or porcelain or cloisonné: these increasingly figure in the stories we tell ourselves, our readers, and our students. These objects, either in their own physical reality or in our historical reconstructions, are often whole: plates, bowls, robes, incense burners. As actors in many of our stories, they are (or are reconstructed to be) intact and functional tools. What we do not often narrativize in explicit terms is what makes up the bulk of the material historical record: broken things, fragments, dust. History is mostly made out of garbage. Of course we know this already, and it will not come as a surprise to any readers of this article. But how often do we celebrate it as a scatter of broken things, as garbage, rather than briefly holding it in place while we try to glue it back together and set it in narrative motion? In Silk Road studies, we have a model for charting a path into a new kind of material historiography. Not: Here is a book that sat on that shelf of this scholar’s library. Instead: Here is a rotting, ripped scrap of paper, let us engage with it as scrap, and in doing so embrace the garbage heap as writing surface and storybook, the scatter of broken bits as historical archive, without immediately narrating them back into pristine wholeness. The history of the Silk Road, as Valerie Hansen tells us in her recent The Silk Road: A New History, was ‘‘most commonly written on recycled paper.’’1 It is richer and more self-reflexive than many other historical fields because of this, and is well worth a serious look by historians of other regions and periods for its thoughtful and innovative consideration of the historical craft of turning the raw materials of many media into a compelling historical account. There are some consistent approaches to writing histories built on archives of the discarded. A study of recycled objects is a study of objects in motion. It necessarily pays attention to the media through which this movement happens (time, space) and the sort of movement happening (circulation, translation, preservation) at any given point in the object’s life. The main themes and approaches in Silk Road studies tend to coalesce around points of concern with these media and forms of motion. They consequently function as useful landmarks when mapping any kind of a journey 1 Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History, 24. REVIEW ARTICLE Tang Studies, 31. 75–90, 2013 # T’ang Studies Society 2013 DOI: 10.1179/0737503413Z.0000000009 through this enormous and diverse field of inquiry, and we will use them as touchstones as we attempt to chart such a path in the following pages. First, a word of caution: fragmentariness does not just characterize the raw material of Silk Road historiography; it also describes the kind of knowledge grasped by anyone attempting to produce something like a comprehensive picture of Silk Road studies as a field. It is a daunting task, as important work on the region and its histories is spread across books, essays, and journals published in many different countries and languages. Many scholars working on Silk Road history come to it as experts in one or more of the linguistic, geographic, or cultural specialties that collectively compose it: they might begin and primarily identify as scholars of Chinese or Tibetan studies, for example. This trans-disciplinarity dramatically expands the body of literature that is significant to Silk Road studies and written by contributors to the field. The body of relevant work is so expansive, in fact, that at times it may not seem to cohere as a ‘‘field’’ at all. In addition to the complication mentioned above, the practical challenges of communication across the vast geographic, temporal, disciplinary, and linguistic spaces of Silk Road studies undermines a sense of the field as a coherent body of historiographical work. A...

Design and experimental study of an end effector for robotic drilling

This paper presents the development of a drill end effector for use on industrial robots. The end effector has low weight and high rigidity. The drill end effector is fully programmable and will realize different drilling mode. The real-time force feedback can detect dull or broken bits, drill to breakthrough, and plot thrust force while drilling. Additionally, the end effector can also be equipped with a coolant/lubricant device. Based on the drill end effector, an experimental study on dry drilling of Ti-6Al-4V alloy and 7075-T6 alloy bimetal stacks was performed by using an uncoated cemented carbide drill. The hole quality (hole size, surface roughness) and thrust force were evaluated at various spindle speeds, feed rates, stacking sequence, and clamp force. This study indicates that the spindle speed and feed rate have an effect on the hole quality and thrust force by means of changing the temperature and plastic deformation of cutting zone. The results show that drilling 7075-T6 alloy firstly would be most efficient because of the high hole quality and the low thrust force. It was also found that high clamp force is helpful to improve the hole quality.

The rate of instrument breakage during orthopaedic procedures.

The current study investigates instrument breakages during both emergency and elective orthopaedic surgery. Over a 2 year period a total of 7,775 procedures were performed. We found that 14 instruments were broken during 12 operative cases. Drill bits accounted for the largest proportion of breakages (11/14), and a specialist registrar was the lead surgeon in the majority (8/12) of cases. Only one case had a consultant as the lead surgeon. In seven cases the broken bit of the surgical instrument was left in the patient. Documentation of this peri-operative complication was deficient, and the patient was often not informed.

Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony"

I chose to be a writer in girlhood because books rescued me. They were the places where I could bring the broken bits and pieces of myself and put them together again, the places where I could dream about alternative realities, possible futures. They let me know firsthand that if the mind was to be the site of resistance, only the imagination could make it so. To imagine, then, was a way to begin the process of transforming reality. All that we cannot imagine will never come into being.

The Running Maiden from Eleusis and the Early Classical Image of Hekate

The so-called Running Maiden from Eleusis, one of the important works of the Early Classical period, is usually interpreted as coming from a pedimental group representing the Rape of Persephone. She would then be the goddess herself or one of her attendants who flees before Hades' violent attack. The downward glance of the figure plus broken bits of marble on her right thigh and on the drapery billowing up from her left leg suggest she represents Hekate, carrying two torches as she lights Persephone's return from the Underworld. This interpretation is supported by vase paintings. Depictions of the return of Persephone including Hekate begin with the Berlin Painter's fragmentary bell krater in Athens from the decade 490-480, the time from which our statue must date. A multi-figured depiction of the Rape of Persephone is not found in Attic vase painting until ca. 430. Although at present we cannot be sure from which building the Running Maiden came, we can envision the pedimental group along the lines of the bell krater by the Persephone Painter in New York.Hekate's dress, an open ungirt peplos, is characteristic of young girls. Vase paintings show that in the Early Classical period, and particularly in an Eleusinian context, this image of Hekate was standard. We find her on the East Pediment of the Parthenon in the running figure G. Here, Artemis-Hekate, wearing the open, ungirt peplos and approaching Demeter and Kore, is the culmination of the tradition going back to the Running Maiden. Afterwards, the three-bodied statue created by Alkamenes supplanted the older image in the imagination of the Athenians.

V.—Palæontological Notes

1. Arbusculites argentea, P. Murray (Edinb. N. Phil. Journ. 1831, vol. xi. p. 147).—Under the title, “Account of the Arbusculites argentea, from the Carboniferous Limestone of Inverteil, near to Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire,” a curious paper was published in 1831, by Dr. P. Murray, of Scarborough. The organisms are described as “very delicate vermiform bodies, in fragments of different lengths, shining with metallic lustre, neither articulated nor cellular, and resembling broken bits of silver wire.” The author adds, “It would appear to have been an attached Mollusc, dichotomous at first, but afterwards sending out lateral branches, moderately tapering, and with very distant and obscure (if any) articulations, grooved longitudinally, and composed of a bright silvery cortical case, and a solid axis of carbonate of lime. … It differs decidedly from the Crinoidal animals, which are regularly articulated; and varies nearly in the same degree from the Corallines, etc., by not displaying the cellular structure characteristic of that family.” Dr. Murray ultimately places this fossil amongst the Corallines, selecting for it a provisional resting-place in the third order of the first class of Lamouroux.