Education, the birthright of every human being : and the only scriptural preparation for the millenium : exhibiting the present imperfect state of popular instruction, and the means of rendering it effectual for the salvation of the country and the world /

Goldsmiths'-Kress no. 34397.

The standard course of lessons and exercises in the tonic sol-fa method of teaching music (Founded on Miss Glover's "Scheme for rendering Psalmody Congregational," 1835) : with additional exercises /

Mode of access: Internet.

The behaviour of the rare earth elements during estuarine mixing-revisited

Complete rare earth element (except Eu) and Y concentrations from the estuarine mixing zone (salinity =0.2 to 33) of Elimbah Creek, Queensland, Australia, were measured by quadrupole ICP-MS without preconcentration. High sampling density in the low salinity regime along with high quality data allow accurate tracing of the development of the typical marine rare earth element anomalies as well as Y/Ho fractionation. Over the entire estuary, the rare earth elements are strongly removed relative to a freshwater endmember (60-80% removal). This large overall removal occurs despite a strong remineralisation peak (190% for La, 130% for Y relative to the freshwater endmember) in the mid-salinity zone. Removal and remineralisation are accompanied by fractionation of the original (freshwater) rare earth element pattern, resulting in light rare earth element depletion. Estuarine fractionation generates a large positive La anomaly and a superchondritic Y/Ho ratio. Conversely, we observe no evidence to support the generation of the negative Ce anomaly in the estuary. With the exception of Ce, the typical marine rare earth element features can thus be attributed to estuarine mixing processes. The persistence of these features in hydrogenous sediments for at least 3.71 Ga highlights the importance of estuarine processes for marine chemistry on geological timescales. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Development and evaluation of an ion induced x-ray emission system for the analysis of light and medium weight elements

The present work describes the development of a proton induced X-ray emission (PIXE) analysis system, especially designed and builtfor routine quantitative multi-elemental analysis of a large number of samples. The historical and general developments of the analytical technique and the physical processes involved are discussed. The philosophy, design, constructional details and evaluation of a versatile vacuum chamber, an automatic multi-sample changer, an on-demand beam pulsing system and ion beam current monitoring facility are described.The system calibration using thin standard foils of Si, P, S,Cl, K, Ca, Ti, V, Fe, Cu, Ga, Ge, Rb, Y and Mo was undertaken at proton beam energies of 1 to 3 MeV in steps of 0.5 MeV energy and compared with theoretical calculations. An independent calibration check using bovine liver Standard Reference Material was performed.  The minimum detectable limits have been experimentally determined at detector positions of 90° and 135° with respect to the incident beam for the above range of proton energies as a function of atomic number Z. The system has detection limits of typically 10- 7 to 10- 9 g for elements 14

Processing and rendering of Fourier domain optical coherence tomography images at a line rate over 524 kHz using a graphics processing unit

In Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT), a large amount of interference data needs to be resampled from the wavelength domain to the wavenumber domain prior to Fourier transformation. We present an approach to optimize this data processing, using a graphics processing unit (GPU) and parallel processing algorithms. We demonstrate an increased processing and rendering rate over that previously reported by using GPU paged memory to render data in the GPU rather than copying back to the CPU. This avoids unnecessary and slow data transfer, enabling a processing and display rate of well over 524,000 A-scan/s for a single frame. To the best of our knowledge this is the fastest processing demonstrated to date and the first time that FD-OCT processing and rendering has been demonstrated entirely on a GPU.

Modelling the behaviour of engine assembly workers

Presents a prototype modelling methodology that provides a generic approach to the creation of quantitative models of the relationships between a working environment, the direct workers and their subsequent performance. Once created for an organisation, such models can provide a prediction of how the behaviour of their workers will alter in response to changes in their working environment. The goal of this work is to improve the decision processes used in the design of the working environment. Through improving such processes, companies will gain better performance from their direct workers, and so improve business competitiveness. This paper first presents the need to model the behaviour of direct workers in manufacturing environments. To begin to address this need, a simplistic modelling framework is developed, and then this is expanded to provide a detailed modelling methodology. There then follows a description of an industrial evaluation of this methodology at Ford Motor Company. This modelling methodology has been assessed in this case study and has been found to be valid in this case. There are many challenges that this theme of research needs to address. The work described in this paper has made an important first step in this area, having gone some way to establishing a generic methodology and illustrating its potential value. Our future work will build on this foundation.

The impact of eliminating extraneous sound and light on students' achievement: An empirical study

The impact of eliminating extraneous sound and light on students’ achievement was investigated under four conditions: Light and Sound controlled, Sound Only controlled, Light Only controlled and neither Light nor Sound controlled. Group, age and gender were the control variables. Four randomly selected groups of high school freshmen students with different backgrounds were the participants in this study. Academic achievement was the dependent variable measured on a pretest, a posttest and a post-posttest, each separated by an interval of 15 days. ANOVA was used to test the various hypotheses related to the impact of eliminating sound and light on student learning. Independent sample T tests on the effect of gender indicated a significant effect while age was non- significant. Follow up analysis indicated that sound and light are not potential sources of extraneous load when tested individually. However, the combined effect of sound and light seems to be a potential source of extrinsic load. The findings revealed that the performance of the Sound and Light controlled group was greater during the posttest and post-posttest. The overall performance of boys was greater than that of girls. Results indicated a significant interaction effect between group and gender on treatment subjects. However gender alone was non-significant. Performance of group by age had no significant interaction and age alone was non-significant in the posttest and post-posttest. Based on the results obtained sound and light combined seemed to be the potential sources of extraneous load in this type of learning environment. This finding supports previous research on the effect of sound and light on learning. The findings of this study show that extraneous sound and light have an impact on learning. These findings can be used to design better learning environments. Such environments can be achieved with different electric lighting and sound systems that provide optimal color rendering, low glare, low flicker, low noise and reverberation. These environments will help people avoid unwanted distraction, drowsiness, and photosensitive behavior.

Color-based surface reflectance separation for scene illumination estimation and rendering

Given the importance of color processing in computer vision and computer graphics, estimating and rendering illumination spectral reflectance of image scenes is important to advance the capability of a large class of applications such as scene reconstruction, rendering, surface segmentation, object recognition, and reflectance estimation. Consequently, this dissertation proposes effective methods for reflection components separation and rendering in single scene images. Based on the dichromatic reflectance model, a novel decomposition technique, named the Mean-Shift Decomposition (MSD) method, is introduced to separate the specular from diffuse reflectance components. This technique provides a direct access to surface shape information through diffuse shading pixel isolation. More importantly, this process does not require any local color segmentation process, which differs from the traditional methods that operate by aggregating color information along each image plane. ^ Exploiting the merits of the MSD method, a scene illumination rendering technique is designed to estimate the relative contributing specular reflectance attributes of a scene image. The image feature subset targeted provides a direct access to the surface illumination information, while a newly introduced efficient rendering method reshapes the dynamic range distribution of the specular reflectance components over each image color channel. This image enhancement technique renders the scene illumination reflection effectively without altering the scene’s surface diffuse attributes contributing to realistic rendering effects. ^ As an ancillary contribution, an effective color constancy algorithm based on the dichromatic reflectance model was also developed. This algorithm selects image highlights in order to extract the prominent surface reflectance that reproduces the exact illumination chromaticity. This evaluation is presented using a novel voting scheme technique based on histogram analysis. ^ In each of the three main contributions, empirical evaluations were performed on synthetic and real-world image scenes taken from three different color image datasets. The experimental results show over 90% accuracy in illumination estimation contributing to near real world illumination rendering effects. ^

This was uncalled for : Dave Eggers' A heartbreaking work of staggering genius subverts the genre of traditional autobiography as an attempt at rendering his life

The purpose of this thesis was to explore why and how the author Dave Eggers subverts the genre of traditional autobiography in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I compared Eggers' work to Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and William S. Burroughs' Junky. I found that like Stein and Burroughs, Eggers utilized various rhetorical devices outside of traditional autobiography because he could not find the means to express himself within the genre. Eggers employed various rhetorical methods reserved for fictional texts, such as stream of consciousness, characterization, and irony, in order to reconcile his feelings towards his parents' deaths and render those feelings in his memoir. I established that Eggers concluded his memoir with impossibility of arriving at one Meaning that could summate his tragic experience. Thus, I proved that Eggers gave the reader the only authentic interpretation he could: the memoir as a small, incomplete glimpse into his life.

Tracing the behaviour of a bridge using time series modelling

Peer reviewed

Using SVG as the Rendering Model for Structured and Graphically Complex Web Material

This paper reports some experiments in using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), rather than the browser default of (X)HTML/CSS, as a potential Web-based rendering technology, in an attempt to create an approach that integrates the structural and display aspects of a Web document in a single XML-compliant envelope. Although the syntax of SVG is XML based, the semantics of the primitive graphic operations more closely resemble those of page description languages such as PostScript or PDF. The principal usage of SVG, so far, is for inserting complex graphic material into Web pages that are predominantly controlled via (X)HTML and CSS. The conversion of structured and unstructured PDF into SVG is discussed. It is found that unstructured PDF converts into pages of SVG with few problems, but difficulties arise when one attempts to map the structural components of a Tagged PDF into an XML skeleton underlying the corresponding SVG. These difficulties are not fundamentally syntactic; they arise largely because browsers are innately bound to (X)HTML/CSS as their default rendering model. Some suggestions are made for ways in which SVG could be more totally integrated into browser functionality, with the possibility that future browsers might be able to use SVG as their default rendering paradigm.