Universal power quality manager with a new control scheme

A new universal power quality manager is proposed. The proposal treats a number of power quality problems simultaneously. The universal manager comprises a combined series and shunt three-phase PWM controlled converters sharing a common DC link. A control scheme based on fuzzy logic is introduced and the general features of the design and operation processes are outlined. The performance of two configurations of the proposed power quality manager are compared in terms of a recently formulated unified power quality index. The validity and integrity of the proposed system is proved through computer simulated experiments

Defensio Prima and the Latin Poets

This chapter, in a prize-winning volume, examines ways in which Milton’s recourse to Latin poetry in Defensio Prima serves a much deeper purpose than that of merely illustrating or lending authority to his argument. Rather, it is argued, the defence engages with a variety of Latin intertexts (Plautus, Terence, Horace, Petronius), which in turn give birth to a range of dramatis personae, with whom Salmasius is ironically and somewhat kaleidoscopically equated. This methodology lends particular force to Milton’s rhetoric of invective whilst hopefully laying to rest the fallacy that his Latin prose writings were writing during a period of ‘poetic inactivity.’ For this is a prose work that is poetically as well as politically aware.

Credit and community: working class debt in the UK since 1880

This book examines credit in working class communities since 1880, focusing on forms of borrowing that were dependent on personal relationships and social networks. It provides an extended historical discussion of credit unions, legal and illegal moneylenders (loan sharks), and looks at the concept of ‘financial exclusion’. Initially, the book focuses on the history of tallymen, check traders, and their eventual movement into moneylending following the loss of their more affluent customers, due to increased spending power and an increasingly liberalized credit market. They also faced growing competition from mail order companies operating through networks of female agents, whose success owed much to the reciprocal cultural and economic conventions that lay at the heart of traditional working class credit relationships. Discussion of these forms of credit is related to theoretical debates about cultural aspects of credit exchange that ensured the continuing success of such forms of lending, despite persistent controversies about their use. The book contrasts commercial forms of credit with formal and informal co-operative alternatives, such as the mutuality clubs operated by co-operative retailers and credit unions. It charts the impact of post-war immigration upon credit patterns, particularly in relation to the migrant (Irish and Caribbean) origins of many credit unions and explains the relative lack of success of the credit union movement. The book contributes to anti-debt debates by exploring the historical difficulties of developing legislation in relation to the millions of borrowers who have patronized what has come to be termed the sub-prime sector.

Women artists of the international avant-garde: the case of "Abstraction-Création" (1931-1936)

Women’s contribution to abstract art in the interwar period is a subject that, to date, has received very little attention. In this article we deal with the untold story of the participation of women artists in Abstraction-Création, the foremost international group dedicated to abstract art in the 1930s. Founded in Paris in 1931, the group took on the work of two previous collectives to become a platform for the dissemination and promotion of abstract art and consisted of around a hundred members. Twelve of these were women, whose writings and works were published in the group’s annual magazine, abstraction creátion art non figuratif (1932-1936), and who participated in a number of the group’s exhibitions. Compared to what had occurred in previous groups, the participation of women, although reduced in number, was comparable to that of the male artists and being members of the group had a generally positive impact on the women’s careers. However, all this came at the expense of relinquishing any gender specificity in their work and the public presentation of it, and demonstrates that the normalization of women’s contributions to the avant-garde could only be brought about alongside a questioning of the more dogmatic views of modernity.

Two-stage mixed discrete-continuous identification of radial basis function (RBF) neural models for nonlinear systems

The identification of nonlinear dynamic systems using radial basis function (RBF) neural models is studied in this paper. Given a model selection criterion, the main objective is to effectively and efficiently build a parsimonious compact neural model that generalizes well over unseen data. This is achieved by simultaneous model structure selection and optimization of the parameters over the continuous parameter space. It is a mixed-integer hard problem, and a unified analytic framework is proposed to enable an effective and efficient two-stage mixed discrete-continuous; identification procedure. This novel framework combines the advantages of an iterative discrete two-stage subset selection technique for model structure determination and the calculus-based continuous optimization of the model parameters. Computational complexity analysis and simulation studies confirm the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.

Both English and Latin: Bilingualism and Biculturalism in Milton's Neo-Latin Writings (219pp.)

Review by Emma A. Wilson, Milton Quarterly 49.1 (March, 2015), 54-59:

‘This volume provides an invaluable new perspective on both Milton’s neo-Latin poems and also the major vernacular poetry by insisting politely but firmly upon the bilingualism of their author and the manifest effects of that bilingualism upon style and intertextuality in his corpus. Through a dextrous combination of manuscript research, modern understandings of bilingualism, and crucially meticulous and demanding close readings, this volume succeeds in vivifying a wealth of new relationships between Milton’s neo-Latin works and his vernacular poems … Haan is expert in probing and elucidating the multiple linguistic and cultural lenses through which Milton projects his work, and the resulting volume brings a new set of historical contexts and consequences for both the major and minor texts, whilst also more importantly furnishing an exciting new method with which to approach these works as a whole ... Haan's linguistic expertise and meticulous archival research combine to create a critical work in which discoveries gradually accumulate and speak to one another in very specific, nuanced dialogues between chapters ... opening up exciting new reading vistas ... The final two chapters, in which Haan harvests some of the fruits of her considerable and fantastic labor in the archives and in current linguistic research into bilingualism, bring to light fresh perspectives on some of Milton's major published poetic works.’


Both English and Latin: Bilingualism and Biculturalism in Milton’s Neo-Latin Writings (2012) (Back Cover):

Gordon Campbell, University of Leicester:
‘Estelle Haan is the world’s foremost authority on Milton’s Latin poetry, and probably the most distinguished student of that poetry in the history of critical commentary. This is a work of extraordinary authority written by a scholar at the height of her powers. In short, this is a terrific book, elegant and informative.’

Anne Mahoney, Tufts University:
‘This book ssucceeds in presenting Milton's poetry as a single, unified body of work. Its biggest strength is the many close readings of Milton's Latin verse as engagements with classical Latin literature. In addition to introducing the Latin verse to new readers, it provides a new approach to Paradise Lost, one that accounts for one of the difficulties of Milton’s text—its language—in a novel way.’


Abstract:

Both English and Latin examines the interplay of Latin and English in a selection of John Milton's neo-Latin writings. It argues that this interplay is indicative of an inherent bilingualism that proceeds hand-in-hand with a self-fashioning that is bicultural in essence. Interlingual flexibility ultimately proved central to the poet of Paradise Lost, an epic uniquely characterized by its Latinate vernacular and its vernacular Latinitas.

How trophic interaction strength depends on traits

A key problem in community ecology is to understand how individual-level traits give rise to population-level trophic interactions. Here, we propose a synthetic framework based on ecological considerations to address this question systematically. We derive a general functional form for the dependence of trophic interaction coefficients on trophically relevant quantitative traits of consumers and resources. The derived expression encompasses-and thus allows a unified comparison of-several functional forms previously proposed in the literature. Furthermore, we show how a community's, potentially low-dimensional, effective trophic niche space is related to its higher-dimensional phenotypic trait space. In this manner, we give ecological meaning to the notion of the "dimensionality of trophic niche space." Our framework implies a method for directly measuring this dimensionality. We suggest a procedure for estimating the relevant parameters from empirical data and for verifying that such data matches the assumptions underlying our derivation. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.


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The Uncertainty of Experience: On George Brecht's Event Scores

George Brecht, an artist best known for his associations with Fluxus, is considered to have made significant contributions to emerging traditions of conceptual art and experimental music in the early 1960s. His Event scores, brief verbal scores that comprised lists of terms or open-ended instructions, provided a signature model for indeterminate composition and were ‘used extensively by virtually every Fluxus artist’. This article revisits Brecht’s early writings and research to argue that, while Event scores were adopted within Fluxus performance, they were intended as much more than performance devices. Specifically, Brecht conceived of his works as ‘structures of experience’ that, by revealing the underlying connections between chanced forms, could enable a kind of enlightenment rooted within an experience of a ‘unified reality’.

The Emperor's new clothes: Eclecticism in autism treatment

Increasingly, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is internationally recognised as the scientific basis for teaching and treatment in autism spectrum disorders. Yet, many governments and professionals across Europe promote an eclectic model as more child-centred and pragmatic. This paper addresses the issues of eclecticism and ABA by exploring how misinformation stands in the way of evidence-based procedures that are truly unified, practical, and child-centred.

SK1 of graded division algebras

The reduced Whitehead group $\SK$ of a graded division algebra graded by a torsion-free abelian group is studied. It is observed that the computations here are much more straightforward than in the non-graded setting. Bridges to the ungraded case are then established by the following two theorems: It is proved that $\SK$ of a tame valued division algebra over a henselian field coincides with $\SK$ of its associated graded division algebra. Furthermore, it is shown that $\SK$ of a graded division algebra is isomorphic to $\SK$ of its quotient division algebra. The first theorem gives the established formulas for the reduced Whitehead group of certain valued division algebras in a unified manner, whereas the latter theorem covers the stability of reduced Whitehead groups, and also describes $\SK$ for generic abelian crossed products.

Confined Site Construction: A qualitative investigation of critical issues affecting management of Health and Safety

The construction industry is inherently risky, with a significant number of accidents and disasters occurring, particularly on confined construction sites. This research investigates and identifies the various issues affecting successful management of health and safety in confined construction sites. The rationale is that identifying the issues would assist the management of health and safety particularly in inner city centres which are mostly confined sites. Using empiricism epistemology, the methodology was based on qualitative research approach by means of multiple case studies in three different geographical locations of Ireland, UK and USA. Data on each case study were collected through individual interviews and focus group discussion with project participants. The findings suggest that three core issues are the underlying factors affecting management of health and safety on confined construction sites. It include, (i) lack of space, (ii) problem of co-ordination and management of site personnel, and (iii) overcrowding of workplace. The implication of this is that project teams and their organisations should see project processes from a holistic point of view, as a unified single system, where quick intervention in solving a particular issue should be the norm, so as not to adversely affect interrelated sequence of events in project operations. Proactive strategies should be devised to mitigate these issues and may include detail project programming, space management, effective constructability review and efficient co-ordination of personnel, plant and materials among others. The value of this research is to aid management and operation of brownfield sites by identifying issues impacting on health and safety management in project process.

After the Party the Hangover?: An Analysis of ‘Post-Celtic Tiger’ Ireland in the Light of the February 2011 elections’

The election of February 2011 was dominated by the International Monetary Fund/European Central Bank bailout of November 2010, the state of the public finances, the ongoing Irish banking crisis, and the disastrous state of the economy with rising unemployment, emigration and collapsing international competiveness. After years of phenomenal economic growth (at least as measured by orthodox economic measurements such as gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment), known as the 'Celtic Tiger‘, during which a bloated construction industry accounted for a quarter of GDP and Irish banks sank nearly a third of their lending in construction projects, Ireland has entered a 'post-Celtic Tiger‘ era. This article offers a critical analysis outlining some political, economic and cultural issues of this election as heralding a decisive stage in the 'post-Celtic Tiger' development of the Republic of Ireland, and suggests that what is required at this present historical moment is that a different development model be articulated by the Irish state and wider society.

Bioaccessibility of trace elements in soils in Northern Ireland

Assessment of elevated concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in soils and the association with specific soil parent material have been the focus of research for a number of years. Risk-based assessment of potential exposure scenarios to identified elevated PTE concentrations has led to the derivation of site- and contaminant-specific soil guideline values (SGVs), which represent generic assessment criteria (GACs) to identify exceeded levels that may reflect an unacceptable risk to human health. A better understanding of the ‘bioavailable’ or ‘bioaccessible’ contaminant concentrations offers an opportunity to better refine contaminant exposure assessments. Utilizing a comprehensive soil geochemical dataset for Northern Ireland provided by the Tellus Survey (GSNI) in conjunction with supplementary bioaccessibility testing of selected soil samples following the Unified BARGE Method, this paper uses exploratory data analysis and geostatistical analysis to investigate the spatial variability of pseudo-total and bioaccessible concentrations of As, Cd, Co, Cr. Cu, Ni, Pb, U, V and Zn. The paper investigates variations in individual element concentrations as well as cross-element correlations and observed lithological/pedological associations. The analysis of PTE concentrations highlighted exceeded levels of GAC values for V and Cr and exceeded SGV/GAC values for Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn. UBM testing showed that for some soil parent materials associated with elevated PTE concentrations e.g. the Antrim Lava Group with high Ni concentrations, the measured oral bioaccessible fraction was relatively low. For other soil parent materials with relatively moderate PTE concentrations, measured oral bioaccessible fraction was relatively high (e.g. the Gala Sandstone Group of the Southern Uplands-Down Longford Terrain). These findings have implications for regional human health risk assessments for specific PTEs.