Unnatural Situation Research Articles

A critical review of the microcosm method in soil animal ecology

The microcosm method is widely used in research on soil animal ecology because it allows for controlled manipulations of fauna, climate, and soil properties. However, differences in biotic and abiotic conditions between the microcosm and the natural soil ecosystem it is intended to represent may bias the experimental results. On the basis of literature, potential influences of the following factors were discussed: (1) Microcosm volume and duration of the incubation period. (2) Preparation of the microcosm substrate, with emphasis on the choice between homogenised substrate and intact soil cores. (3) Incubation conditions (moisture, temperature and drainage). (4) Biotic diversity in the microcosm soil, with emphasis on (a) the general problem of low biodiversity in microcosms, (b) the unnatural situation in microcosms without plants, (c) differences in microflora composition between “faunal” and “non-faunal” treatments, and (d) relative densities of the organisms present. Possible ways of dealing with a few of these problems were also discussed.

Hybrid visual and memory search for scenes and objects with variable viewpoints.

In hybrid search, observers search visual arrays for any of several target types held in memory. The key finding in hybrid search is that response times (RTs) increase as a linear function of the number of items in a display (visual set size), but RTs increase linearly with the log of the memory set size. Previous experiments have shown this result for specific targets (find exactly this picture of a boot on a blank background) and for broad categorical targets (find any animal). Arguably, these are rather unnatural situations. In the real world, objects are parts of scenes and are seen from multiple viewpoints. The present experiments generalize the hybrid search findings to scenes (Experiment 1) and multiple viewpoints (Experiment 2). The results replicated the basic pattern of hybrid search results: RTs increased logarithmically with the number of scene photos/categories held in memory. Experiment 3 controls the experiment for which viewpoints were seen in an initial learning phase. The results replicate the findings of Experiment 2. Experiment 4 compares hybrid search for specific viewpoints, variable viewpoints, and categorical targets. Search difficulty increases from specific viewpoints to variable viewpoints and then to categorical targets. The results of the four experiments show the generality of logarithmic search through memory in hybrid search.

Microbial and Parasitic Infection in Fish

Major concerns in the fisheries business are parasitic fish and bacterial infections. When it comes to aquatic life microbes are a regular occurrence. The majority of microbes are naturally occurring in water. Because of poor environmental conditions, limited nutrition, and inefficient fish husbandry practices, they only cause diseases. Some microbial infections occur in fresh water fish (Pseudomonas infection, Acinetobacter infections, bacterial gill diseases), in marine water (Vibriosis, Tenacibaculosis, streptococcal infections, bacterial skin diseases) and in brackish water (Red sea bream iridoviral disease (RSID, Lymphocystis disease (LCD). All these infections affect fish differently. Parasitic illnesses can cause epidemics in fish that are overcrowded or under other unnatural situations. A large number of fish species have been severely impacted by parasite and bacterial species. Some parasitic infections of fresh water are Renal Sphaerosporosis, due to leeches and nematodes, isopods and Gill Monogeneans; in amarine water are Microsporidiosis, Cryptocaryonosis and Brooklynelliosis and in brackish water are Diplostomum spathaceum metacercarial infections. Some preventive actions are done to control this problem. In this review there is a complete detail about parasite and bacterial infections and how they can be prevented.

Effect of speech-stimulus degradation on phoneme-related potential.

Auditory evoked potential (AEP) has been used to evaluate the degree of hearing and speech cognition. Because AEP generates a very small voltage relative to ambient noise, a repetitive presentation of a stimulus, such as a tone, word, or short sentence, should be employed to generate ensemble averages over trials. However, the stimulation of repetitive short words and sentences may present an unnatural situation to a subject. Phoneme-related potentials (PRPs), which are evoked-responses to typical phonemic stimuli, can be extracted from electroencephalography (EEG) data in response to a continuous storybook. In this study, we investigated the effects of spectrally degraded speech stimuli on PRPs. The EEG data in response to the spectrally degraded and natural storybooks were recorded from normal listeners, and the PRP components for 10 vowels and 12 consonants were extracted. The PRP responses to a vocoded (spectrally-degraded) storybook showed a statistically significant lower peak amplitude and were prolonged compared with those of a natural storybook. The findings in this study suggest that PRPs can be considered a potential tool to evaluate hearing and speech cognition as other AEPs. Moreover, PRPs can provide the details of phonological processing and phonemic awareness to understand poor speech intelligibility. Further investigation with the hearing impaired is required prior to clinical application.

Mendalami Informasi dengan Bertabayyun Menurut Al-Qur’an di Tinjau Dari Tafsir Klasik dan Kontemporer

today social media is an effective, transparent and efficient communication medium. the approach used in this research is a qualitative approach, with the type of research library research. The primary data sources in this study are the books of commentary (Ibn Jarir Ath-Thobari, Ibn Kathir, Al-Misbah, and Al-Azhar) and secondary data on theses, journals, and articles that discuss tabayyun, as well as dictionaries, and books related to tabayyun. which is relevant. The results of this study conclude that according to various opinions of mufassir from classical and contemporary circles, namely 1) There is a prohibition on hasty in taking action on a news 2) Fasiq is a liar and makes mistakes or is damaged. 3) Every news must be filtered so that they do not step or act in an unnatural situation. 4) The information that comes is not justified or rejected, but the truth must be investigated first

Explicit and implicit measures of body ownership and agency: affected by the same manipulations and yet independent.

People are assumed to represent themselves in terms of body ownership and agency. Studies using the rubber- or virtual-hand illusion have assessed ownership and agency by means of explicit ownership and agency ratings and implicit measures, like proprioceptive drift in the case of ownership. These measures often show similar effects but also some discrepancies, suggesting that they rely on data sources that overlap, but not completely. To systematically assess commonalities and discrepancies, we adopted an immersed virtual hand illusion (VHI) design, in which three independent factors were manipulated: the synchrony between the movement of real and virtual effector, the type of effector, which was a virtual hand or triangle, and the spatial congruency between the real and virtual effector. Commonalities and discrepancies in the effects of these factors were assessed by crossing explicit and implicit measures for ownership and agency. While standard ratings were used as explicit measures, implicit ownership was assessed by means of proprioceptive drift and implicit agency by means of intentional binding. Results showed similar effect patterns for the two agency measures, which, however, were not correlated, different effect patterns for the two ownership measures, and a strong correlation between the two explicit measures. Taken altogether, our findings suggest that explicit and implicit measures of ownership and agency partly rely on shared informational sources, but seem to differ with respect to other sources that are integrated or with respect to the processed dimension (shape vs. time). The findings also suggest that some findings obtained with RHI designs might reflect more the unnatural situation that that design puts individuals into rather than generalizable mechanisms of computing perceived ownership and agency.

Manajemen Supervisi Klinis Untuk Meningkatkan Profesionalisme Guru Di Sekolah Menengah Atas Kolese De Britto Yogyakarta

The research aimed to know the clinical supervission management to improve teacher’s professionalism in Senior High School of Kolese De Britto Yogyakarta.This research was conducted in Senior High School of Kolese De Britto Yogyakarta. The collecting data method were interview, observation and documentation. The informan in this research were principal, teachers and supervisor. The data validity were done by triangulation techniques. The data were analyzed by interactive analysis model.Results of the research showed that: (1) Clinical supervision management to improve teachers professionalism in Senior High School of Kolese De Britto Yogyakarta was successful. Supervission management in grew continuously and systematically. Supervisors understand and know about clinical supervision properly, help and guidance teachers with aims for learning emendation. (2) Professional competence of teachers which felt needs to understood and well known at Senior High School Kolese De Britto are competences of professional teachers based on vision and mission in school. The competences mentioned is suitable with school vision and mission based on leadership competence. (3) Senior High School Kolese De Britto as educational institutions, support Ignatian spirituality. The term of this spiritual is risen from the knowledge about contexts, action, reflection, and evaluation. The learning quality is not only just about transfer of knowledge, but also about values. (4) Supporting factors in the management of clinical supervision include a culture and school management, initiative and transparency of a teacher, and human resources that support, institution staffs and foundation give PKG and FDG socialization, and evaluation activities. (5) Constraints factors in implementation of clinical supervision management are: erroneous paradigms about clinical supervision (supervision is still looked and understood as an assessment for a teacher performance), time for teaching is demanding schedule, there are unnatural situation and action in the class, there are some teachers don’t have openhanded when under strict, there are psychology constraint, and achievable of using technology based on IT.

Partial key exposure attacks on RSA: Achieving the Boneh–Durfee bound

Thus far, several lattice-based algorithms for partial key exposure attacks on RSA, i.e., given the most/least significant bits (MSBs/LSBs) of a secret exponent d and factoring an RSA modulus N, have been proposed such as Blömer and May (Crypto'03), Ernst et al. (Eurocrypt'05), and Aono (PKC'09). Due to Boneh and Durfee's small secret exponent attack, partial key exposure attacks should always work for d<N0.292 even without any partial information. However, it was difficult task to make use of the given partial information without losing the quality of Boneh–Durfee's attack. In particular, known partial key exposure attacks fail to work for d<N0.292 with only few partial information. Such unnatural situation stems from the fact that the additional information makes underlying modular equations involved. In this paper, we propose improved attacks when a secret exponent d is small. Our attacks are better than all known previous attacks in the sense that our attacks require less partial information. Specifically, our attack is better than all known ones for d<N0.5625 and d<N0.368 with the MSBs and the LSBs, respectively. Furthermore, our attacks fully cover the Boneh–Durfee bound, i.e., they always work for d<N0.292. At a high level, we obtain the improved attacks by fully utilizing unraveled linearization technique proposed by Herrmann and May (Asiacrypt'09). Although Herrmann and May (PKC'10) already applied the technique to Boneh–Durfee's attack, we show elegant and impressive extensions to capture partial key exposure attacks. More concretely, we construct structured triangular matrices that enable us to recover more useful algebraic structures of underlying modular polynomials. We embed the given MSBs/LSBs to the recovered algebraic structures and construct our partial key exposure attacks. In this full version, we provide overviews and explicit proofs of the triangular matrix constructions. We believe that the additional explanations help readers to understand our techniques.

MENINGKATKAN PROFESIONALISME GURU DAN MUTU PEMBELAJARAN MELALUI IMPLEMENTASI MANAJEMEN SUPERVISI KLINIS

The research aimed to know the clinical supervission management to improve teacher’s professionalism and learning quality. Results of the research showed that: (1) Clinical supervision management to improve teachers professionalism and learning quality was successful. Supervission management in grew continuously and systematically. Supervisors understand and know about clinical supervision properly, help and guidance teachers with aims for learning emendation. (2) Professional competence of teachers which felt needs to understood and well known are competences of professional teachers based on vision and mission in school. The competences mentioned is suitable with school vision and mission based on leadership competence. (3) Supporting factors in the management of clinical supervision include a culture and school management, initiative and transparency of a teacher, and human resources that support, institution staffs and foundation give PKG and FDG socialization, and evaluation activities. (4) Constraints factors in implementation of clinical supervision management are: erroneous paradigms about clinical supervision (supervision is still looked and understood as an assessment for a teacher performance), time for teaching is demanding schedule, there are unnatural situation and action in the class, there are some teachers don’t have openhanded when under strict, there are psychology constraint, and achievable of usingtechnology based on IT.

Ethics in communication with patients in the state of disorders of consciousness. Natural situation and the use of modern technologies

Abstract Communication is a very important part of the human activity on very many levels. Communication with the patient has become an important part of the personalized health care and it plays an important role in the diagnosis, and also at each stage of treatment and rehabilitation. Not always, however, you can realize a natural communication situation due to dysfunctions, disorders and injuries. In particular, it is difficult for the unresponsive patients such as patients with disorders of consciousness. At this work have compared the communication in the natural situations (communication as the sharing) with the communication in the unnatural situation, for unresponsive patients (communication extended), indicating is also the ethical context of communication with patients.

Saccadic foraging: reduced reaction time to informative targets.

The study of saccadic reaction times has revealed a great deal about the neural mechanisms underlying neural decision, in terms of Bayesian factors such as prior probability and information supply. In addition, recent work has shown that saccades are faster to visual targets associated with conventional monetary or food rewards. However, because the purpose of saccades is to acquire information, it could be argued that this is an unnatural situation: the most natural and fundamental reward is the amount of information supplied by a target. Here, we report the results of a study investigating the hypothesis that a saccade to a target whose colour provides information about the location of a subsequent target is faster than to one that does not. We show that the latencies of saccades to a location that provides reliable information about the location of a future target are indeed shorter, their distributions being shifted in a way that implies that the rate of rise of the underlying decision signal is increased. In a race between alternative targets, this means that expected information will be an important factor in deciding where to look, so that 'foraging' saccades are more likely to be made to useful targets.

Rebirth

Rebirth Katie Fallon (bio) A turkey vulture is a perfect creature. It is neither prey nor predator. It exists outside the typical food chain, beyond the kill-or-be-killed law of nature, although without death it would starve. On six-foot wings it floats above our daily lives, waiting for the inevitable moment that will come to each of us, to every living thing. Then the vulture transforms these transformations—these deaths—into life. I was thinking about the circle of life as the elevator door slid open and the attendant wheeled me onto the sixth floor, into the hospital's labor and delivery unit. My husband Jesse followed, laden with several bags of our clothes, an outfit for our soon-to-be-born baby, cameras, and books. One of the bags also contained a charm of sorts—a large black flight feather, recently molted from a turkey vulture we'd been caring for at our nonprofit avian rehabilitation center. The vulture had been caught in an illegally set leg-hold trap, meant for a raccoon or another small mammal; after two surgeries and many rounds of physiotherapy, the bird would be healthy enough to be released in a week or two. In addition to the feather, a pendant depicting Nekhbet, ancient Egypt's vulture goddess, hung from my necklace. [End Page 131] This was probably the first time a vulture feather had been brought into the maternity ward of the university's state-of-the-art hospital. But ancient peoples, including the Egyptians and the Greeks, considered vultures protectors and ideal mothers. Nekhbet, usually shown as a griffon vulture with wings spread and a shen—a symbol of eternity— in her talons, appears on the tombs of pharaohs. A golden Nekhbet sits atop Tutankhamen's death mask, and several elaborate Nekhbet necklaces and collars encircled the young king's neck and shoulders. In addition to shielding the pharaohs, Nekhbet protected mothers and women during childbirth. Perhaps it was the vulture's ability to turn death into life that inspired Nekhbet's role as a kind of supernatural midwife. When our daughter entered the world seven hours later, I was still wearing my Nekhbet pendant. Turkey vultures have an undeserved reputation as dirty, sneaky sorts. Many people find them ugly, disgusting, or worse. They have been accused of killing calves and lambs, though no documented accounts of this exist. It's likely the birds are attracted to livestock giving birth—both turkey vultures and black vultures have been known to eat the placentas of sheep and cows. (I'd wanted to save my own placenta to feed to the turkey vulture in our care, but it was whisked away at the hospital.) The scientific literature on turkey vultures goes to great lengths to document any instances of them taking live prey; these instances are very few and far between, and most involve "unnatural situations," such as birds caught in traps or birds in captivity. The only animals ever proven to be killed by turkey vultures include a ruffed grouse chick, small fish, turtle hatchlings, and perhaps nestlings or sickly birds. If it's available, and it usually is, turkey vultures prefer carrion. A world without avian scavengers is a world imperiled. Vultures decontaminate landscapes by removing dead animals that might otherwise contribute to the spread of disease. A turkey vulture's powerful [End Page 132] digestive system can neutralize dangerous pathogens such as anthrax and botulism. Unlike some mammalian scavengers, vultures do not spread rabies or distemper virus. Vultures are the peaceful recyclers of the animal kingdom, perfectly adapted to cleanse, purify, and renew. My daughter was born clutching the umbilical cord in her little hand. Our midwife let Jesse "catch" the baby. He handed the wiggling, crying, and visibly confused creature to me, and I held her to my chest as she began to root for her first meal. The side of her cheek pressed against me as she squirmed, and I realized the Nekhbet pendant was between us. I slid the pendant over my shoulder as the baby began to nurse. We were naked, the warm, slippery baby and I, and aside from the modern trappings of...

DIE GEOMETRIESE EN RIVIERGRENSE VAN SUIDWES-AFRIKA, MET SPESIALE VERWYSING NA DIE NOORDE EN DIE CAPRIVISTROOK

In this article it becomes evident that the boundaries of Southwest Africa and especially the Northern and Caprivi boundaries are arbitrary and artificial. Human decision-making, although many years ago, created this unnatural situation whereby people speaking the same language and often engaging in the same economic activities, were separated from each other. Separations where economical, ethnic and linguistic factors are not taken into account, occur worldwide and is not a problem restricted to the boundaries of Africa.

Xenomelia: a new right parietal lobe syndrome

BackgroundDamage to the right parietal lobe has long been associated with various disorders of body image. The authors have recently suggested that an unusual behavioural condition in which otherwise rational...

Using physiological signals to detect natural interactive behavior

Many researchers in the Human Robot Interaction (HRI) and Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) domains try to build robots and agents that exhibit human-like behavior in real-world close encounter situations. One major requirement for comparing such robots and agents is to have an objective quantitative metric for measuring naturalness in various kinds of interactions. Some researchers have already suggested techniques for measuring stress level, awareness etc using physiological signals like Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Blood Volume Pulse (BVP). One problem of available techniques is that they are only tested with extreme situations and cannot according to the analysis provided in this paper distinguish the response of human subjects in natural interaction situations. One other problem of the available techniques is that most of them require calibration and some times ad-hoc adjustment for every subject. This paper explores the usefulness of various kinds of physiological signals and statistics in distinguishing natural and unnatural partner behavior in a close encounter situation. The paper also explores the usefulness of these statistics in various time slots of the interaction. Based on this analysis a regressor was designed to measure naturalness in close encounter situations and was evaluated using human-human and human-robot interactions and shown to achieve statistically significant distinction between natural and unnatural situations.

Settling Decisions and Heterospecific Social Information Use in Shrikes

Animals often settle near competitors, a behavior known as social attraction, which belies standard habitat selection theory. Two hypotheses account for these observations: individuals obtain Allee benefits mediated by the physical presence of a competitor, or they use successfully settled individual as a source of information indicating the location of high quality habitat. We evaluated these hypotheses experimentally in two species of shrikes. These passerine birds with a raptor-like mode of life impale prey to create larders that serve as an indicator of male/habitat quality. Thus, two forms of indirect information are available in our system: a successfully settled shrike and its larder. Typically these two cues are associated with each other, however, our experimental treatment created an unnatural situation by disassociating them. We manipulated the presence of larders of great grey shrikes and examined the settling decisions of red-backed shrikes within and outside the great grey shrike territories. Male red-backed shrikes did not settle sooner on plots with great grey shrikes compared to plots that only contained artificial larders indicating that red-backed shrikes do not use the physical presence of a great grey shrike when making settling decisions which is inconsistent with the Allee effect hypothesis. In contrast, for all plots without great grey shrikes, red-backed shrikes settled, paired and laid clutches sooner on plots with larders compared to plots without larders. We conclude that red-backed shrikes use larders of great grey shrikes as a cue to rapidly assess habitat quality.

METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ATTEMPTS TO TRANS-DIFFERENTIATE ADULT STEM CELLS INTO EMBRYONIC-LIKE CELLS IN VITRO.

The aim of this research was to set up an in vitro system to trans-differentiate haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) into embryo-like stem cells in order to de-differentiate them. In this more naive state they should be cultivated more easily in order to augment them for consecutive differentiation and autologous transplantation for use in clinical practice. Using the principle of the methodology of blastocyst injection, HSCs were co-cultivated with mouse embryonic stem cells (mES) with and without cell to cell contact. After co-cultivation HSCs were analyzed by flow-cytometry using haematopoietic markers (CD34, CD45, CD133) and embryonic stem cell markers (SSEA-4, Tra-1-60, Tra-1-81). No ES cell markers were detected on the former HSCs. A decrease in HSC marker intensity was the only finding. This implies that no de-differentiation took place. We hypothesize that the unnatural situation of a mixture of two cell types originating in different species may have led to this outcome. To achieve our goal of in vitro de-differentiation we need to use a purely human culture system without animal additives.

Avifaunal changes as a consequence of large‐scale livestock exclusion in the mountains of Central Argentina

Summary In the high Mountains of Córdoba (Central Argentina) large native herbivores were replaced completely by domestic livestock early in the 20th century. Recently, livestock were excluded in a large portion of the mountains to reduce alarming soil erosion rates, leading to an unnatural situation as the area has a long evolutionary history of large herbivore grazing. Many of the birds living in this area are endemic subspecies. Lack of large herbivore grazing can reduce plant diversity, but the response of birds is unknown. We surveyed birds in 46 1·8‐ha transects distributed across eight vegetation units under (a) traditional livestock rearing and (b) 4 years of livestock exclusion. We described bird communities per transect using density and richness. The effects of grazing situation and vegetation units on these parameters were analysed by two‐way analysis of variance (anova). Additionally, we analysed bird composition through detrended correspondence analysis (DCA). Livestock exclusion caused, in all vegetation units, significant reductions in observed bird density and richness when all species were included in the analysis, and when the 12 endemic subspecies were considered separately. An analysis for each guild showed a similar pattern but differences were significant only for richness of insectivorous and granivorous birds. Vegetation units always showed significant differences in bird density and richness, with no significant interactions between vegetation and grazing situations. Community composition described through DCA was different between vegetation units but not between grazing situations. Endemic birds were associated mainly with rocky areas. Synthesis and applications. In areas where large native herbivores are locally extinct, extensive exclusion of domestic livestock is not recommended where bird conservation is also a priority. Where possible, we suggest reintroducing native large herbivores. Where reintroductions are not feasible, livestock must be excluded only from those sites where it is most necessary, and maintained elsewhere at reduced stocking rates. To mimic past natural grazing regimes more effectively, livestock grazing regimes should incorporate temporal fluctuations at seasonal, yearly and decade scales.

Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre (review)

Reviewed by: Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre David L. Russell (bio) Zipes, Jack . Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. New York: Routledge, 2006. Readers acquainted with Jack Zipes' voluminous body of work on folktales will find many familiar themes in this latest contribution—particularly his belief in the power of folktales to transmit cultural values and mores, and his conviction that society can best be characterized by the abiding conflict between oppressors and the oppressed. But if the material is at times predictable, it is, nevertheless, provocative and, occasionally, compelling. This is a weighty tome in several ways—delving deeply into psychology, historical scholarship, and literary theory, it is also replete with a multitude of footnotes and a lengthy bibliography. At times, impeded by a less-than-facile writing style, the narrative is bogged down with paragraph-long lists of titles that might better be relegated to notes or the bibliography. Some readers will undoubtedly find the jargon a bit off-putting. And there are signs of careless editing, such ascribing the work of Perrault and Mme. d'Aulnoy to "1790" and "eighteenth century" when it surely should have read "1690" and "seventeenth century"—and the error is repeated several times across two pages, causing at least momentary confusion (68–69). On another occasion, he shifts the spelling of a character's name from Morrell to Morel (182–83). In a work so filled with minutiae, such oversights are bound to occur—of course, one wonders how many others went unheeded. The initial chapters review the history of what Zipes calls the literary fairy tales—which, in his definition, includes any tale that has been committed to the written page (he goes back to Boccaccio and earlier), as opposed to a tale that is the original creation of a writer, as it is so often defined. His conclusion is that it is impossible to find a pure "fairy" tale or pure "folk" tale, since all have been "contaminated" through "cross-cultural and intercultural exchange" producing a myriad of variants (43). These cultural variants are what chiefly concern him in this study. Much of this material he has covered elsewhere—as he himself points out. In chapter 1 he resurrects a discussion of "Little Red Riding Hood," then provides a survey in chapter 2—"The Evolution and Dissemination of the Classical Fairy Tale." It is only in chapter 3 that he actually begins with the examination of specific tales and gets to the heart of the book as suggested by its title. His interest is in looking at modern-day variations of the best-known folktales to show how they have been adapted to twentieth- and twentieth-first-century lifestyles. For readers interested primarily in children's literature, one caveat should be offered: many of his examples are drawn from adult literature, including story writers, playwrights and novelists, and many [End Page 299] are drawn from the cinema, the opera, and the ballet. The purpose of this eclectic mix seems to be to illustrate the breadth and depth of the cultural influence of the traditional folktales—a fairly widely accepted notion. What Zipes brings to the study is his own wide reading in the fairy tales and his well-known political and social viewpoints. So Cinderella is seen as a tale of the personal conflict that faces people when placed in situations requiring them to act contrary to their natural biological drives—as, for example, when a stepparent is asked to nurture another's child. This, Zipes sees, as an unnatural situation, one that threatens to undermine the stepparent's own self-interests (which would be to favor his or her own child, no matter how unpleasant that child may be). Zipes concludes that Cinderella "became contagious and stuck . . . because it was addressing issues of child abandonment, family legacy, sibling rivalry, and parental love" (115). Whether one agrees with Zipes or sees his conclusions as overreaching, his discussions are filled with thoughtful and provocative observations. Chapter 3 closes with a review of several modern adult versions of Cinderella, including one featuring a gay prince charming, one with a lesbian Cinderella...

Innovative quality process control via cellular neural networks

The continuous detection and correction of unnatural process behaviours, owing to special causes of variations, is a basic task in manufacturing to keep any process stable and predictable, as well as to improve it continuously. In this paper, a contribution to increase quality process control from an innovative point of view is presented, which consists in designing Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs) to behave as associative memories for recognising unnatural behaviours. As an example, a test case is developed by considering abnormal cyclic behaviours given by sinusoidal signals. For this purpose, a CNN is synthesised for an associative memory, to recognise these unnatural situations. A robustness analysis of the synthesised network is then developed in the presence of input noise. The performances of the designed circuit have been illustrated in detail.