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result(s) for
"Beecroft, Simon"
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Star Wars, the clone wars. Pirates-- and worse!
\"Meet some fearsome space pirates and find out how the Jedi outwit them\"--P. [4] of cover.
Book
Reading caribbean writing: a cross-cultural approach to the work of edward kamau braithwaite, v.s naipaul, derek walcott and wilson harris
This study is essentially concerned with the practice of reading Caribbean writing, and the representation of writers and readers, writing and reading in the work of four major Caribbean writers: Edward Kamau Brathwaite, V.S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris. In it I seek to overcome some of the difficulties of reading culturally different books by offering a cross-cultural approach to selected literary texts. Since the emergence of an identifiable body of Caribbean writing in the 1950's and 1960's, the literature of and about the Caribbean has largely been read in terms of a search for identity. I wish to argue that a key aspect of this search for identity is manifested in a thematic, formal and stylistic preoccupation with writing and reading that is evident in the many works of Brathwaite, Naipaul, Walcott and Harris. The work of Russian literary theorist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin is central to my development of a cross-cultural approach to Caribbean writing. It is my intention to suggest that Bakhtin's work offers a valuable resource and response to the dilemma faced by the Western reader of Caribbean writing: a resource that not only provides a rich area of analysis in the field of cultural, linguistic and literary hybridisation, but that also implicitly offers a valuable theorisation of the practice of dialogic reading across cultures. The thesis comprises of six major chapters and a short conclusion. The opening chapter introduces issues relating to the reading of Caribbean writing, and establishes a theoretical connection between the work of Bakhtin and ideas central to Caribbean and postcolonial studies. Thereafter attention switches from Braithwaite to Naipaul, Walcott and Harris, to consider questions of language, authorship, history, reading and the tempero-spatial representation of the cross-cultural Caribbean.
Dissertation
Star wars character encyclopedia
\"Meet more than 200 Star Wars characters. The definitive guide to the heroes, villains, aliens, and droids fro the Star Wars galaxy features detailed character profiles, little-known facts, and amazing movie images. Fully revised and updated.\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Doctor Who : the visual dictionary
Presents an introduction to the popular science fiction television program, discussing its characters, plot lines, villains, gadgets, monsters, aliens, weaponry, and spaceships.
Book
Pressure sensing technology for remote control: Can we motivate users to stay on the learning curve?
Learning to use a novel human-in-the-loop control system is often a slow and frustrating process due to the need to understand new interaction paradigms. Unsurprisingly, research has commonly focused on identifying methods to accelerate such learning. In this paper we consider an alternative approach of motivating learners to persist with their learning. If learners are motivated to continue investing time in using a novel control system they will transition to proficiency, albeit at different timescales. Participants controlled the movements of a virtual robot in real-time by adjusting their movements whilst seated on a pressure sensing mat. In two experiments, participants played a game where their task was to move a virtual robot to collect targets as quickly as possible. Targets were only presented for a fixed duration such that participants received binary reward feedback dependent upon whether they collected a given target in time or not. This feedback was used to calculate each participant’s success frequency which was used as a proxy for their skill level and thus learning. Experiment 1 showed that participants could learn the control system but that their motivation to play the game decreased as the experiment continued. Experiment 2 investigated whether adapting task difficulty as a function of the participants’ current skill level (indexed by success frequencies) would increase the time participants chose to invest playing the game. Participants did not choose to play the game for longer when playing the game under this adaptive difficulty condition compared with fixed difficulty conditions. We conclude that most participants improved at using the pressure sensing mat for remote control but adapting the difficulty of the task to participant’s skill level did not increase the time they were willing to invest in playing it.
Journal Article
Star Wars : complete locations
The ultimate reference book for the planets, cities, and battles of the Star wars galaxy! The cross-section artworks offer incredible levels of detail that take you far beyond what is seen on-screen-- even beyond freeze-frame!
Book
Adaptively monitoring streamflow using a stereo computer vision system
The gauging of free surface flows in waterways provides the foundation for monitoring and managing the water resources of built and natural environments. A significant body of literature exists around the techniques and benefits of optical surface velocimetry methods to estimate flows in waterways without intrusive instruments or structures. However, to date, the operational application of these surface velocimetry methods has been limited by site configuration and inherent challenging optical variability across different natural and constructed waterway environments. This work demonstrates a significant advancement in the operationalisation of non-contact stream discharge gauging applied in the computer vision stream gauging (CVSG) system through the use of methods for remotely estimating water levels and adaptively learning discharge ratings over time. A cost-effective stereo camera-based stream gauging device (CVSG device) has been developed for streamlined site deployments and automated data collection. Evaluations between reference state-of-the-art discharge measurement technologies using DischargeLab (using surface structure image velocimetry), Hydro-STIV (using space–time image velocimetry), acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs), and gauging station discharge ratings demonstrated that the optical surface velocimetry methods were capable of estimating discharge within a 5 %–15 % range between these best available measurement approaches. Furthermore, results indicated model machine learning approaches leveraging data to improve performance over a period of months at the study sites produced a marked 5 %–10 % improvement in discharge estimates, despite underlying noise in stereophotogrammetry water level or optical flow measurements. The operationalisation of optical surface velocimetry technology, such as CVSG, offers substantial advantages towards not only improving the overall density and availability of data used in stream gauging, but also providing a safe and non-contact approach for effectively measuring high-flow rates while providing an adaptive solution for gauging streams with non-stationary characteristics.
Journal Article
A CCG expansion in ABCD3 causes oculopharyngodistal myopathy in individuals of European ancestry
Oculopharyngodistal myopathy (OPDM) is an inherited myopathy manifesting with ptosis, dysphagia and distal weakness. Pathologically it is characterised by rimmed vacuoles and intranuclear inclusions on muscle biopsy. In recent years CGG • CCG repeat expansion in four different genes were identified in OPDM individuals in Asian populations. None of these have been found in affected individuals of non-Asian ancestry. In this study we describe the identification of CCG expansions in
ABCD3
, ranging from 118 to 694 repeats, in 35 affected individuals across eight unrelated OPDM families of European ancestry.
ABCD3
transcript appears upregulated in fibroblasts and skeletal muscle from OPDM individuals, suggesting a potential role of over-expression of CCG repeat containing
ABCD3
transcript in progressive skeletal muscle degeneration. The study provides further evidence of the role of non-coding repeat expansions in unsolved neuromuscular diseases and strengthens the association between the CGG • CCG repeat motif and a specific pattern of muscle weakness.
A significant proportion of individuals with inherited neuromuscular disease do not receive a genetic diagnosis. Here, the authors establish CCG expansions in the 5’ untranslated region of
ABCD3
as a cause of oculopharyngodistal myopathy (OPDM) in individuals of European ancestry and identify increased expression of expansion-containing
ABCD3
transcripts as a possible disease mechanism underlying muscle degeneration.
Journal Article