A new system of logic and development of the principles of truth and reasoning : applicable to moral subjects and the conduct of human life /

Mode of access: Internet.

Income mobility and the U.S. economy : open society or caste system?

"January 1992."

Railway injuries: with special reference to those of the back and nervous system, in their medico-legal and clinical aspects. ...

"Reprinted from Wood's medical and surgical monographs."

Open air crusaders : the individuality of the child versus the system : together with a report of the Elizabeth McCormick open air schools /

Includes bibliographic references (p. 125-128).

Kick'n'On: Helping young males kick back into life

Young men with psychotic disorders have persistently poorer outcomes in social functioning when interventions aimed at arresting social isolation are not implemented. Recent literature has indicated that it is important to develop rehabilitation programmes that are based on areas of needs that are identified by the participants. To assist in the design of a group programme, a qualitative (focus group) investigation of the perceptions of young males concerning male roles and identity in today’s society was conducted. The participants were six young males with psychotic disorders who had been referred to an Australian regional rehabilitation service to address poor social functioning and social isolation. Three main themes emerged from the focus groups. These were role models, concept of what is a man, and societal expectations. The findings were used to develop a group programme called Kick’n’On.

Effect of experimentally induced low back pain on postural sway with breathing

Although breathing perturbs balance, in healthy individuals little sway is detected in ground reaction forces because small movements of the spine and lower limbs compensate for the postural disturbance. When people have chronic low back pain (LBP), sway at the ground is increased, possibly as a result of reduced compensatory motion of the trunk. The aim of this study was to determine whether postural compensation for breathing is reduced during experimentally induced pain. Subjects stood on a force plate with eyes open, eyes closed, and while breathing with hypercapnoea before and after injection of hypertonic saline into the right lumbar longissimus muscle to induce LBP. Motion of the lumbar spine, pelvis, and lower limbs was measured with four inclinometers fixed over bony landmarks. During experimental pain, motion of the trunk in association with breathing was reduced. However, despite this reduction in motion, there was no increase in postural sway with breathing. These data suggest that increased body sway with breathing in people with chronic LBP is not simply because of reduced trunk movement, but instead, indicates changes in coordination by the central nervous system that are not replicated by experimental nociceptor stimulation.

Tracking the states of a nonlinear system in the weight-space of a feed-forward neural network

Nonlinear, non-stationary signals are commonly found in a variety of disciplines such as biology, medicine, geology and financial modeling. The complexity (e.g. nonlinearity and non-stationarity) of such signals and their low signal to noise ratios often make it a challenging task to use them in critical applications. In this paper we propose a new neural network based technique to address those problems. We show that a feed forward, multi-layered neural network can conveniently capture the states of a nonlinear system in its connection weight-space, after a process of supervised training. The performance of the proposed method is investigated via computer simulations.

Designing a safety management support system using open architecture databases: the requirements of information representation in the support of managers' risk-related decision-making

This research was conducted at the Space Research and Technology Centre o the European Space Agency at Noordvijk in the Netherlands. ESA is an international organisation that brings together a range of scientists, engineers and managers from 14 European member states. The motivation for the work was to enable decision-makers, in a culturally and technologically diverse organisation, to share information for the purpose of making decisions that are well informed about the risk-related aspects of the situations they seek to address. The research examined the use of decision support system DSS) technology to facilitate decision-making of this type. This involved identifying the technology available and its application to risk management. Decision-making is a complex activity that does not lend itself to exact measurement or precise understanding at a detailed level. In view of this, a prototype DSS was developed through which to understand the practical issues to be accommodated and to evaluate alternative approaches to supporting decision-making of this type. The problem of measuring the effect upon the quality of decisions has been approached through expert evaluation of the software developed. The practical orientation of this work was informed by a review of the relevant literature in decision-making, risk management, decision support and information technology. Communication and information technology unite the major the,es of this work. This allows correlation of the interests of the research with European public policy. The principles of communication were also considered in the topic of information visualisation - this emerging technology exploits flexible modes of human computer interaction (HCI) to improve the cognition of complex data. Risk management is itself an area characterised by complexity and risk visualisation is advocated for application in this field of endeavour. The thesis provides recommendations for future work in the fields of decision=making, DSS technology and risk management.

Full-field feed-forward equalizer with adaptive system optimization

We numerically investigate the combination of full-field detection and feed-forward equalizer (FFE) for adaptive chromatic dispersion compensation up to 2160 km in a 10 Gbit/s on-off keyed optical transmission system. The technique, with respect to earlier reports, incorporates several important implementation modules, including the algorithm for adaptive equalization of the gain imbalance between the two receiver chains, compensation of phase misalignment of the asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and simplified implementation of field calculation. We also show that in addition to enabling fast adaptation and simplification of field calculation, full-field FFE exhibits enhanced tolerance to the sampling phase misalignment and reduced sampling rate when compared to the full-field implementation using a dispersive transmission line.

Control of second-life hybrid battery energy storage system based on modular boost-multilevel buck converter

To fully utilize second-life batteries on the grid system, a hybrid battery scheme needs to be considered for several reasons: the uncertainty over using a single source supply chain for second-life batteries, the differences in evolving battery chemistry and battery configuration by different suppliers to strive for greater power levels, and the uncertainty of degradation within a second-life battery. Therefore, these hybrid battery systems could have widely different module voltage, capacity, and initial state of charge and state of health. In order to suitably integrate and control these widely different batteries, a suitable multimodular converter topology and an associated control structure are required. This paper addresses these issues proposing a modular boost-multilevel buck converter based topology to integrate these hybrid second-life batteries to a grid-tie inverter. Thereafter, a suitable module-based distributed control architecture is introduced to independently utilize each converter module according to its characteristics. The proposed converter and control architecture are found to be flexible enough to integrate widely different batteries to an inverter dc link. Modeling, analysis, and experimental validation are performed on a single-phase modular hybrid battery energy storage system prototype to understand the operation of the control strategy with different hybrid battery configurations.