Influence of the cutting edge micro-geometry of PCBN tools on the flank wear in orthogonal quenched and tempered turning M2 steel

Quenched and tempered high-speed steels obtained by powder metallurgy are commonly used in automotive components, such as valve seats of combustion engines. In order to machine these components, tools with high wear resistance and appropriate cutting edge geometry are required. This work aims to investigate the influence of the edge preparation of polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN) tools on the wear behavior in the orthogonal longitudinal turning of quenched and tempered M2 high-speed steels obtained by powder metallurgy. For this research, PCBN tools with high and low-CBN content have been used. Two different cutting edge geometries with a honed radius were tested: with a ground land (S shape) and without it (E shape). Also, the cutting speed was varied from 100 to 220 m/min. A rigid CNC lathe was used. The results showed that the high-CBN, E-shaped tool presented the longest life for a cutting speed of 100 m/min. High-CBN tools with a ground land and honed edge radius (S shaped) showed edge damage and lower values of the tool’s life. Low-CBN, S-shaped tools showed similar results, but with an inferior performance when compared with tools with high CBN content in both forms of edge preparation.

GOSPEL SINGING IN THE VALLEY: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE HYMNODY AND CHORAL SINGING OF THE LISU ON THE CHINA-BURMA/MYANMAR BORDER

This dissertation is an ethnomusicological study of contemporary musical practices of the Christian Lisu in Nujiang Prefecture in northwest Yunnan on the China-Myanmar border. Among all the changes that the Nujiang Lisu have experienced since the twentieth century, the spread of Protestant Christianity throughout Nujiang’s mountainous villages has existed for the longest time and had one of the greatest effects. Combining historical investigation and ethnographic description, this study uses the lens of music to examine the impact of this social change on the Lisu living in this impoverished frontier region. The Lisu characteristics have never been vital in the music written by the Christian Lisu in Nujiang. Compared with the practices described in other ethnomusicological writings on Christian music around the world that I have read, this absence of incorporation of indigenous musical elements is unusual. There are probably many other cases similar to that of the Lisu, but few ethnomusicologists have paid attention to them. I aim to elucidate this particular scenario of Lisu Christian music in relation to three social and cultural forces: the missionary legacy of conventions; the government’s identification of the Lisu as a minority nationality and its national policies toward them since the 1950s; and the transnational religious exchange between the Christian Lisu in China and Myanmar since the late 1980s. My examination focuses on two genres which the Lisu use to express their Christian beliefs today: ddoqmuq mutgguat, derived from American northern urban gospel songs, the basis of the Lisu choral singing; and mutgguat ssat, influenced by the Christian pop of the Burmese Lisu, with instrumental accompaniment and daibbit dance and preferred by the young people. Besides studying these two genres in the religious context, I also juxtapose them with other musical traditions in the overall Nujiang music soundscape and look at their role in local social interactions such as those between sacred and secular, and majority and minority. This dissertation demonstrates that the collective performances of shared repertoires have not only created a sense of affinity for the Nujiang Christian Lisu but also have reinforced the formation of Lisu transnational religious networks.

SYSTEMS OF DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONSTHAT ARE COMPETITIVE OR COOPERATIVE II:CONVERGENCE ALMOST EVERYWHERE*MORRIS W. HIRSCH

A vector field in n-space determines a competitive (or cooperative) system of differential equations provided all of the off-diagonal terms of its Jacobian matrix are nonpositive (or nonnegative). The main results in this article are the following. A cooperative system cannot have nonconstant attracting periodic solutions. In a cooperative system whose Jacobian matrices are irreducible the forward orbit converges for almost every point having compact forward orbit closure. In a cooperative system in 2 dimensions, every solution is eventually monotone.  Applications are made to generalizations of positive feedback loops.

Fatores associados e preditores de quedas em idosos domiciliados de acordo com a Classificação Internacional da Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde

Objetivo geral da pesquisa foi identificar os fatores associados e preditivos de quedas em idosos domiciliados em uma cidade do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil, considerando as características sociodemográficas e epidemiológicas e utilizando-se de fatores ambientais da Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde (CIF). Objetivos específicos: identificar as características sociodemográficas e epidemiológicas de idosos domiciliados em uma cidade do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil; descrever os fatores sociodemográficos e epidemiológicos que influenciam nas quedas em idosos domiciliados; Relacionar os fatores ambientais da Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde em idosos domiciliados com riscos de quedas. Pesquisa epidemiológica transversal, ocorrida de junho a julho de 2013, com 167 idosos das áreas de abrangência de uma unidade básica de saúde. Critérios de inclusão na pesquisa: ambos os sexos, cadastrados e com residência fixa nas áreas de abrangência de uma unidade básica de saúde. Critérios de exclusão: idosos com alterações cognitivas. Utilizou-se entrevista estruturada com três etapas: levantamento das características dos idosos investigados; questões relacionadas às quedas; informações sobre os fatores ambientais da Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde. Os dados foram agrupados para tratamento estatístico/descritivo. A média das idades 71 anos, com desvio padrão de 7,1. A maioria dos idosos era do sexo feminino, casados, com escolaridade de quatro e oito anos, residindo com filhos e companheiro, aposentados e com renda de um salário mínimo. As doenças mais prevalentes foram circulatórias, osteomusculares, e endócrinas e os idosos apresentaram pelo menos uma comorbidade. Dos 167 idosos, 65 caíram nos últimos doze meses, no ambiente domiciliar, com prevalência em: banheiro, cozinha e na rua, sendo as calçadas as mais destacadas. A maior proporção de permanência no chão foi de dez minutos, e a maioria dos idosos, após as quedas, não procuraram os serviços de saúde. Como tratamento para as quedas, obteve-se o não cirúrgico. Quanto à Classificação Internacional da Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde, houve destaque para o uso de medicações como fator influente nas quedas dos idosos domiciliados. Percebe-se a importância de avaliação constante por parte dos profissionais de saúde sobre os idosos caidores e não-caidores, no sentido de identificar os fatores de riscos intrínsecos e extrínsecos para implementar estratégias de prevenção que compreendam reabilitação da força muscular, equilíbrio e capacidade funcional, redução da polifarmácia, educação para o autocuidado e um olhar do enfermeiro voltado para os períodos e locais de maior incidência de quedas, melhorando desta forma a qualidade de vida dos idosos residentes em diferentes contextos. A pesquisa traz como contribuição social um re-olhar acerca do redimensionamento do cuidado à pessoa idosa que teve queda no próprio ambiente, a partir da Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde.

Automated Software Debugging Using Hybrid Static/Dynamic Analysis

With the increasing complexity of today's software, the software development process is becoming highly time and resource consuming. The increasing number of software configurations, input parameters, usage scenarios, supporting platforms, external dependencies, and versions plays an important role in expanding the costs of maintaining and repairing unforeseeable software faults. To repair software faults, developers spend considerable time in identifying the scenarios leading to those faults and root-causing the problems. While software debugging remains largely manual, it is not the case with software testing and verification. The goal of this research is to improve the software development process in general, and software debugging process in particular, by devising techniques and methods for automated software debugging, which leverage the advances in automatic test case generation and replay. In this research, novel algorithms are devised to discover faulty execution paths in programs by utilizing already existing software test cases, which can be either automatically or manually generated. The execution traces, or alternatively, the sequence covers of the failing test cases are extracted. Afterwards, commonalities between these test case sequence covers are extracted, processed, analyzed, and then presented to the developers in the form of subsequences that may be causing the fault. The hypothesis is that code sequences that are shared between a number of faulty test cases for the same reason resemble the faulty execution path, and hence, the search space for the faulty execution path can be narrowed down by using a large number of test cases. To achieve this goal, an efficient algorithm is implemented for finding common subsequences among a set of code sequence covers. Optimization techniques are devised to generate shorter and more logical sequence covers, and to select subsequences with high likelihood of containing the root cause among the set of all possible common subsequences. A hybrid static/dynamic analysis approach is designed to trace back the common subsequences from the end to the root cause. A debugging tool is created to enable developers to use the approach, and integrate it with an existing Integrated Development Environment. The tool is also integrated with the environment's program editors so that developers can benefit from both the tool suggestions, and their source code counterparts. Finally, a comparison between the developed approach and the state-of-the-art techniques shows that developers need only to inspect a small number of lines in order to find the root cause of the fault. Furthermore, experimental evaluation shows that the algorithm optimizations lead to better results in terms of both the algorithm running time and the output subsequence length.

How does employer support and educational background effect an Ergonomics Practitioner’s awareness of the relationship between ergonomics and psychosocial hazard control?

There is a growning need to address psychological health and safety in the workplace. Ergonomics tends to be widely recognized for its physical applications, such as ¨office¨ and ¨manual materials handling¨ however the other domains of specialization of ergonomics (cognitive and organizational) appear to be less well known. This study evaluates the level of understanding that professionals who practice ergonomics have of the relation between ergonomics and the control of psychosocial hazards in the workplace. A survey was distributed to ergonomics practitioners and asked them about their awareness of the relation between ergonomics and workplace psychosocial hazard control. Ergonomists and human factors specialists demonstrated a greater awareness of this relationship than other allied occupational groups that also practice ergonomics, however they indicated that there may be difficulties in the “real world” applying these areas of knowledge into practice. Participants who demonstrated a high level of awareness of the relation between ergonomics and psychosocial hazard control demonstrated stronger organizational commitment than participants with a low awareness. Ergonomics practitioners who reported having employer support for professional development also demonstrated a higher degree of awareness of the relation between ergonomics and psychosocial hazard control, as did the professionals who had been practicing in the field the longest. This research provides some insight for professional associations for Ergonomists, employers of Ergonomists, and human resource professionals about how ergonomics practitioners perceive the ergonomics field and the profession as well as their employing organization.

Incomplete information games of conflict and collective action

My thesis consists of three essays that investigate strategic interactions between individuals engaging in risky collective action in uncertain environments. The first essay analyzes a broad class of incomplete information coordination games with a wide range of applications in economics and politics. The second essay draws from the general model developed in the first essay to study decisions by individuals of whether to engage in protest/revolution/coup/strike. The final essay explicitly integrates state response to the analysis. The first essay, Coordination Games with Strategic Delegation of Pivotality, exhaustively analyzes a class of binary action, two-player coordination games in which players receive stochastic payoffs only if both players take a ``stochastic-coordination action''. Players receive conditionally-independent noisy private signals about the normally distributed stochastic payoffs. With this structure, each player can exploit the information contained in the other player's action only when he takes the “pivotalizing action”. This feature has two consequences: (1) When the fear of miscoordination is not too large, in order to utilize the other player's information, each player takes the “pivotalizing action” more often than he would based solely on his private information, and (2) best responses feature both strategic complementarities and strategic substitutes, implying that the game is not supermodular nor a typical global game. This class of games has applications in a wide range of economic and political phenomena, including war and peace, protest/revolution/coup/ strike, interest groups lobbying, international trade, and adoption of a new technology. My second essay, Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs, studies the decision problem of citizens who must decide whether to submit to the status quo or mount a revolution. If they coordinate, they can overthrow the status quo. Otherwise, the status quo is preserved and participants in a failed revolution are punished. Citizens face two types of uncertainty. (a) non-strategic: they are uncertain about the relative payoffs of the status quo and revolution, (b) strategic: they are uncertain about each other's assessments of the relative payoff. I draw on the existing literature and historical evidence to argue that the uncertainty in the payoffs of status quo and revolution is intrinsic in politics. Several counter-intuitive findings emerge: (1) Better communication between citizens can lower the likelihood of revolution. In fact, when the punishment for failed protest is not too harsh and citizens' private knowledge is accurate, then further communication reduces incentives to revolt. (2) Increasing strategic uncertainty can increase the likelihood of revolution attempts, and even the likelihood of successful revolution. In particular, revolt may be more likely when citizens privately obtain information than when they receive information from a common media source. (3) Two dilemmas arise concerning the intensity and frequency of punishment (repression), and the frequency of protest. Punishment Dilemma 1: harsher punishments may increase the probability that punishment is materialized. That is, as the state increases the punishment for dissent, it might also have to punish more dissidents. It is only when the punishment is sufficiently harsh, that harsher punishment reduces the frequency of its application. Punishment Dilemma 1 leads to Punishment Dilemma 2: the frequencies of repression and protest can be positively or negatively correlated depending on the intensity of repression. My third essay, The Repression Puzzle, investigates the relationship between the intensity of grievances and the likelihood of repression. First, I make the observation that the occurrence of state repression is a puzzle. If repression is to succeed, dissidents should not rebel. If it is to fail, the state should concede in order to save the costs of unsuccessful repression. I then propose an explanation for the “repression puzzle” that hinges on information asymmetries between the state and dissidents about the costs of repression to the state, and hence the likelihood of its application by the state. I present a formal model that combines the insights of grievance-based and political process theories to investigate the consequences of this information asymmetry for the dissidents' contentious actions and for the relationship between the magnitude of grievances (formulated here as the extent of inequality) and the likelihood of repression. The main contribution of the paper is to show that this relationship is non-monotone. That is, as the magnitude of grievances increases, the likelihood of repression might decrease. I investigate the relationship between inequality and the likelihood of repression in all country-years from 1981 to 1999. To mitigate specification problem, I estimate the probability of repression using a generalized additive model with thin-plate splines (GAM-TPS). This technique allows for flexible relationship between inequality, the proxy for the costs of repression and revolutions (income per capita), and the likelihood of repression. The empirical evidence support my prediction that the relationship between the magnitude of grievances and the likelihood of repression is non-monotone.

Assessing nut germination protocols for macadamia cultivar 'Beaumont'

A rapid rate and high percentage of macadamia nut germination, together with production of vigorous seedlings, are required by nurseries and breeding programs. Germination of nuts is typically protracted, however, and rarely reaches 100%. Many studies have been conducted into macadamia germination, but most have assessed percent germination only. This study investigated the effects of various treatments on percent germination, germination rate, and plant, shoot and root dry weights. The treatments tested were combinations of: (i) soaking or not soaking seeds in a dilute fungicide solution prior to planting; (ii) four different planting media; and (iii) leaving seed trays open or placing them inside clear plastic bags. For freshly harvested nuts, sowing in potting mix under clear plastic and without soaking produced the highest percent germination and germination rate, the largest shoots, and longest lateral roots.

A crítica às mulheres no fr. 7 de Semónides de Amorgos

O poema de Semónides de Amorgos sobre as mulheres (Fr. 7 West) é o mais extenso fragmento preservado da poesia iâmbica grega da época arcaica. Nele o poeta apresenta uma reflexão pessimista de cariz misógino sobre o carácter feminino, numa narrativa original que cataloga dez tipos de mulher, oito baseadas em modelos animais (a porca, a raposa, a cadela, a burra, a doninha, a égua, a macaca e a abelha) e dois em elementos da natureza (a terra e o mar). Pretende-se demonstrar, neste estudo, que essa caracterização tipológica era inovadora e respondia a uma dupla finalidade: satírica e humorística. Uma vez que o poema se destinaria a um contexto simpótico, um espaço tipicamente masculino, a mulher e a sua natureza constituiriam uma temática que levaria o homem a reflectir, de um modo simultaneamente sério e divertido, sobre a sua própria condição.

Nano-silver treatments reduced bacterial colonization and biofilm formation at the stem-ends of cut gladiolus ‘Eerde’ spikes

Postharvest treatments with nano-silver (NS) alleviate bacteria-related stem blockage of some cut flowers to extend their longevity. Gladiolus (Gladiolus hybridus) is a commercially important cut flower species. For the first time, the effects of NS pulses on cut gladiolus ‘Eerde’ spikes were investigated towards reducing bacterial colonization of and biofilm formation on their stems. As compared with a deionized water (DIW) control, pulse treatments with NS at 10, 25 and 50 mg L−1 for 24 h significantly (P ≤ 0.05) prolonged the vase life of cut gladiolus spikes moved into vases containing DIW. The NS treatments enhanced floret ‘opening rate’ and ‘daily ornamental value’. Although there were no significant differences among NS treatments, a 25 mg L−1 NS pulse treatment tended to give the longest vase life and the best ‘display quality’. All NS pulse treatments significantly improved water uptake by and reduced water loss from flowering spikes, thereby delaying the loss of water balance and maintaining relative fresh weight. Fifty (50) mg L−1 NS pulse-treated cut gladiolus spikes tended to exhibit the most water uptake and highest water balance over the vase period. However, there was no significant difference between 25 and 50 mg L−1 NS pulse treatments. Observations of stem-end bacterial proliferation during the vase period on cut gladiolus spikes either with or without NS pulse treatments were performed by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). As compared to the control treatment, they revealed that the 25 mg L−1 NS pulse treatment effectively inhibited bacterial colonization and biofilm formation on the stem-end cut surface and in the xylem vessels, respectively. In vitro culture of the bacterial microflora and analysis of biofilm architecture using CLSM revealed that NS treatment restricted bacterial biofilm formation. After static culture for 24 h at 35 °C with 25 mg L−1 NS in the medium, no biofilm form or structure was evident. Rather, only limited bacterial cell number and scanty extracellular polysaccharide (EPS) material were observed. In contrast, mature bacterial biofilm architecture comprised of abundant bacteria interwoven with EPS formed in the absence of NS.

Evaluation of the cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of benchmark multi-walled carbon nanotubes in relation to their physicochemical properties

To contribute with scientific evidence to the grouping strategy for the safety assessment of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), this work describes the investigation of the cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of four benchmark MWCNTs in relation to their physicochemical characteristics, using two types of human respiratory cells. The cytotoxic effects were analysed using the clonogenic assay and replication index determination. A 48h-exposure of cells revealed that NM-401 was the only cytotoxic MWCNT in both cell lines, but after 8-days exposure, the clonogenic assay in A549 cells showed cytotoxic effects for all the tested MWCNTs. Correlation analysis suggested an association between the MWCNTs size in cell culture medium and cytotoxicity. No induction of DNA damage was observed after any MWCNTs in any cell line by the comet assay, while the micronucleus assay revealed that both NM-401 and NM-402 were genotoxic in A549 cells. NM-401 and NM-402 are the two longest MWCNTs analyzed in this work, suggesting that length may be determinant for genotoxicity. No induction of micronuclei was observed in Beas-2B cell line and the different effect in both cell lines is explained in view of the size-distribution of MWCNTs in the cell culture medium, rather than cell's specificities.

Some results on open-edge and open mobile guarding of polygons and triangulations

This paper focuses on a variation of the Art Gallery problem that considers open-edge guards and open mobile-guards. A mobile guard can be placed on edges and diagonals of a polygon, and the ‘open’ prefix means that the endpoints of such an edge or diagonal are not taken into account for visibility purposes. This paper studies the number of guards that are sufficient and sometimes necessary to guard some classes of simple polygons for both open-edge and open mobile-guards. A wide range of polygons is studied, which include orthogonal polygons with or without holes, spirals, orthogonal spirals and monotone polygons. Moreover, this problem is also considered for planar triangulation graphs using open-edge guards.

Other-Regarding Preferences in General Equilibrium

We study competitive market outcomes in economies where agents have other-regarding preferences. We identify a separability condition on monotone preferences that is necessary and sufficient for one’s own demand to be independent of the allocations and characteristics of other agents in the economy. Given separability, it is impossible to identify other-regarding preferences from market behavior: agents be- have as if they had classical preferences that depend only on own consumption in competitive equilibrium. If preferences, in addition, depend only on the final allocation of consumption in society, the Sec- ond Welfare Theorem holds as long as an increase in resources can be distributed such that all agents are better off. Nevertheless, the First Welfare Theorem generally does not hold. Allowing agents to care about their own consumption and the distribution of consump- tion possibilities in the economy, we provide a condition under which agents have no incentive to make direct transfers, and show that this condition implies that competitive equilibria are efficient given prices.

Modos de intervención criminal punible en crímenes de atrocidad: un análisis jurídico-penal a partir de los aportes de la criminología

790 p.

Asymptotic analysis of combined breather-kink modes in a Fermi-Pasta-Ulam chain

We find approximations to travelling breather solutions of the one-dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) lattice. Both bright breather and dark breather solutions are found. We find that the existence of localised (bright) solutions depends upon the coefficients of cubic and quartic terms of the potential energy, generalising an earlier inequality derived by James [CR Acad Sci Paris 332, 581, (2001)]. We use the method of multiple scales to reduce the equations of motion for the lattice to a nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equation at leading order and hence construct an asymptotic form for the breather. We show that in the absence of a cubic potential energy term, the lattice supports combined breathing-kink waveforms. The amplitude of breathing-kinks can be arbitrarily small, as opposed to traditional monotone kinks, which have a nonzero minimum amplitude in such systems. We also present numerical simulations of the lattice, verifying the shape and velocity of the travelling waveforms, and confirming the long-lived nature of all such modes.