Autism in the air: using Point of View Video Priming and Natural Environment Teaching to help children with autism travel by plane

This paper describes a study that used video materials and visits to an airport to prepare children on the autism spectrum for travel by plane. Twenty parents and carers took part in the study with children aged from 3 to 16 years. The authors explain that the methods they used were based on Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) research; a video modeling technique called Point-Of-View Video-priming and during visits to an airport they used procedures known as Natural Environment Teaching. The findings suggest that using video and preparing children by taking them through what is likely to happen in the real environment when they travel by plane is effective and the authors suggest these strategies could be used to support children with autism with other experiences they need or would like to engage in such as visits to the dentist or hairdressers and access to leisure centres and other public spaces.

The linear elastic in-plane bending of curved hollow profiles having a thin-walled rectangular section

This paper presents a simple solution for the flexibility calculation of curved profiles having a rectangular thin-walled cross-section. Some assumptions related to geometric details about the shape of the deformed structure are included in the present analysis, aiming at an economic and accurate solution. Results concerning the distortion of the transverse section are compared with the corresponding data from the solution with a thin shell finite element analysis. A flexibility factor for the structure analysed here is presented as a graphical result.

Does Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Have a Role in US Managed Care Drug Formularies? An Empirical Study of Utilization, Costs, Outcomes, and Elasticity of Demand of a Value-Based Formulary

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2015

Floating on the same plane: metropolis, money and the culture of abstraction

This article argues that the emergence of a trans-disciplinary discourse of ‘visual culture’ must be understood as, above all, a constitutively urban phenomenon. More specifically, it is in the historically new form of the capitalist metropolis, as described most famously by Simmel, that the ‘hyper-stimulus’ of modern visual culture has its social and spatial conditions. Paradoxically, however, it is as a result of this that visual culture studies is also intrinsically ‘haunted’ by a certain spectre of the invisible: one rooted in those forms of ‘real abstraction’ which Marx identifies with the commodity and the money form. Considering, initially, the canonical urban visual forms of the collage and the spectacle, these are each read in a certain relation to Simmel’s account of metropolitan life and of the money form, and, through this, to what the author claims are those forms of social and spatial abstraction that must be understood to animate them. Finally, the article returns to the entanglement of the visible and invisible entailed by this, and concludes by making some tentative suggestions about something like a paradoxical urban ‘aesthetic’ of abstraction on such a basis.

Ultra compact inline E-plane waveguide extracted pole bandpass filters

This letter presents an ultra compact extracted pole E-plane filter. The proposed structure can achieve up to 65% size reduction in comparison with a standard extracted pole filter designed at 9.5 GHz centre frequency with a 3% fractional bandwidth. The filter has been fabricated and tested using E-plane waveguide technology. Measurements on a fabricated filter confirm the accuracy of the design method.

Optically reconfigurable E-plane waveguide resonators and filters

This paper presents an optically reconfigurable E-plane waveguide resonator and filter. N-type silicon dice doped with phosphorus is used as the switching element and is connected to the edge of a metallic fin. Illumination of the silicon dice allows realization of a different length of the fin, thus creating a shift in resonant frequency of the structure. Frequency tuning range up to about 5.2% is achieved for the resonator as well as the filter. Measurements on a fabricated optically reconfigurable resonator confirm the accuracy of the design procedure. Measured responses show good agreement with simulation.

Dynamic analysis of earthquake phenomena by means of pseudo phase plane

This paper analyses earthquake data in the perspective of dynamical systems and its Pseudo Phase Plane representation. The seismic data is collected from the Bulletin of the International Seismological Centre. The geological events are characterised by their magnitude and geographical location and described by means of time series of sequences of Dirac impulses. Fifty groups of data series are considered, according to the Flinn-Engdahl seismic regions of Earth. For each region, Pearson’s correlation coefficient is used to find the optimal time delay for reconstructing the Pseudo Phase Plane. The Pseudo Phase Plane plots are then analysed and characterised.

Analysis of Forest Fires by means of Pseudo Phase Plane and Multidimensional Scaling Methods

Forest fires dynamics is often characterized by the absence of a characteristic length-scale, long range correlations in space and time, and long memory, which are features also associated with fractional order systems. In this paper a public domain forest fires catalogue, containing information of events for Portugal, covering the period from 1980 up to 2012, is tackled. The events are modelled as time series of Dirac impulses with amplitude proportional to the burnt area. The time series are viewed as the system output and are interpreted as a manifestation of the system dynamics. In the first phase we use the pseudo phase plane (PPP) technique to describe forest fires dynamics. In the second phase we use multidimensional scaling (MDS) visualization tools. The PPP allows the representation of forest fires dynamics in two-dimensional space, by taking time series representative of the phenomena. The MDS approach generates maps where objects that are perceived to be similar to each other are placed on the map forming clusters. The results are analysed in order to extract relationships among the data and to better understand forest fires behaviour.

Demand Response Programs Definition Using Demand Price Elasticity to Define Consumers Aggregation for an Improved Remuneration Structure

The positioning of the consumers in the power systems operation has been changed in the recent years, namely due to the implementation of competitive electricity markets. Demand response is an opportunity for the consumers’ participation in electricity markets. Smart grids can give an important support for the integration of demand response. The methodology proposed in the present paper aims to create an improved demand response program definition and remuneration scheme for aggregated resources. The consumers are aggregated in a certain number of clusters, each one corresponding to a distinct demand response program, according to the economic impact of the resulting remuneration tariff. The knowledge about the consumers is obtained from its demand price elasticity values. The illustrative case study included in the paper is based on a 218 consumers’ scenario.

Pseudo Phase Plane and Fractional Calculus Modelling of Western Global Economic Downturn

This paper applies Pseudo Phase Plane (PPP) and Fractional Calculus (FC) mathematical tools for modeling world economies. A challenging global rivalry among the largest international economies began in the early 1970s, when the post-war prosperity declined. It went on, up to now. If some worrying threatens may exist actually in terms of possible ambitious military aggression, invasion, or hegemony, countries’ PPP relative positions can tell something on the current global peaceful equilibrium. A global political downturn of the USA on global hegemony in favor of Asian partners is possible, but can still be not accomplished in the next decades. If the 1973 oil chock has represented the beginning of a long-run recession, the PPP analysis of the last four decades (1972–2012) does not conclude for other partners’ global dominance (Russian, Brazil, Japan, and Germany) in reaching high degrees of similarity with the most developed world countries. The synergies of the proposed mathematical tools lead to a better understanding of the dynamics underlying world economies and point towards the estimation of future states based on the memory of each time series.

Photograph - Dorothy Rungeling with Plane

A photograph of Dorothy Rungeling in front of a plane with the Mack Trucks and Buses logo. This photograph is from her personal scrapbooks, the page is labelled "1956 International Air Race Hamilton to Havana".