Hatsune Miku is a celebrity; she is also a virtual singer with no real entity. The phenomenon of her success in Japan and abroad provides the starting point for this report, which examines the different forms of collaborative creativity that grow out of social energy arising from a collective interest in the dazzling Vocaloid characters and VOCALOID singing synthesis technology. From an outside observer's perspective, the feverish reception of this anime character may be found to be uncanny. How can this "unreal" thing possess such affective power? By attaching themselves to a non-real object, are Japanese otaku (nerds) exhibiting pathological tendencies? Or has their frequent exposure to anime and manga predisposed them to be emotionally receptive to virtual characters in way that neophytes lack the experience to understand? Taking a cue from Bruno Latour, this report confronts these questions by opening the malfunctional social black box of otaku group formation. I try to understand how the meaning of otaku is made stable through a social explanation, and why the VOCALOID fandom is distinct from ordinary people. In contrast to the technological determinism and socially determined use of technology, I apply Actor-Network-Theory's theoretical and ethnomethodological perspectives to the VOCALOID community constituted from sociotechnical networks. Based on a position of ANT that each actor interacts with other actors (human and nonhuman) that constitute the network, this report looks at the particular media platforms and their infrastructures that allow the distribution and circulation of songs and videos. I then provide my ethnographic account based on a local VOCALOID event in Hong Kong in an attempt to understand how fans are recruited to the network, and what their motivations to collaborate, create, and share are. Making the connections evident, I conclude that the stereotypical social theory is somewhat unessential to our understanding of social relations. / text

<p> In Fall 2014 over 460,000 students enrolled in the 23-campus California State University system; unfortunately, more than 20,000 qualified applicants were denied admission due to capacity and budgetary constraints. In response to continued overcrowding, the Chancellor's Office and Board of Trustees are investigating "bottlenecks," defined as anything limiting students' ability to graduate in a timely manner. Blended learning, a pedagogy combining face-to-face and computer-mediated instruction, presents a potential solution to alleviate overcrowding and bottleneck problems. </p><p> In an effort to investigate the extent to which student demographics and performance analytics explain student success outcomes in a popular blended learning psychology course, an explanatory sequential design was used to study 18,254 students enrolled in the course between 2006 and 2014. In the initial quantitative part of the design, logistic regression and traditional regression analysis were used to determine the predictors of those who chose to drop the course, those who ultimately passed the course, and then to investigate why some students received higher grades than others. Results revealed that race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and early course participation were key predictors of success.</p><p> Some of the most significant findings &ndash; which included the fact that Mexican American, African American, and Filipino students were less successful in the course than their White counterparts &ndash; were examined in more detail in the qualitative part of the study that followed. Specifically, students who self-identified within these race/ethnicities provided a nuanced look at their own course experiences by completing questionnaires and interviews for the study. Thematic findings revealed socioeconomic status, time management, parents' education, and students' campus community as factors contributing to course performance. </p><p> This study represents one of few large-scale analyses of a blended learning environment focused upon learner outcomes, and it serves to inform the evaluative work surrounding student success interventions, including the ability to predict and understand student risk characteristics for dropping, failing, or performing poorly within a blended learning environment. Understanding the many reasons students engage in less successful behavior may inform student success strategies and alleviate bottlenecks, especially as the prevalence of blended learning courses increases within the California State University system.</p>

<p>Software Defined Radios (SDRs) are redefining the current landscape of wireless communications in both military and commercial sectors. The rapidly evolving capabilities of digital electronics are making it possible to execute significant amounts of signal processing on general purpose processors ratherthan using special-purpose hardware.</p><p>As a consequence of the availability of SDR, applications can be used to implement flexible communication systems in an operating prototype within a very short time. However, the initial lack of standards and design rules leads to incompatibility problems when using products from different manufacturers. This problem is critical for the military and public safety sectors, for this reason the US Army was interested in SDR and carried out research into the specification of a common software infrastructure for SDR. This initiative started in the mid-1990s and evolved into the Software Communications Architecture (SCA).</p><p>SCA is a non-proprietary, open architecture framework that allows a designer to design interoperable and platform independent SDR applications. At the same time the SCA framework, by abstracting the radio communication system, speeds up waveform development because developers no longer have to worry about hardware details.</p><p>This thesis project uses OSSIE, an open source SCA implementation, to illustrate the process of developing a waveform. Today companies are exploiting open source solutions and investing money to evaluate and improve available technologies rather than developing their own solutions: OSSIE provides a working SCA framework without any license cost. OSSIE also provides some tools to develop SCA waveforms. Of course open source software comes with some limitations that a designer must take into account. Some of these limitations will be described for OSSIE (specifically the limited documentation and lack of libraries), along with some suggestions for how to reduce their impact.</p><p>This thesis project shows in detail the development process for SCA waveforms in OSSIE. These details are examined in the course of successfully implementing a target waveform to enable the reader to understand the advantagies and disadvantages of this technology and to facilitate more people using OSSIE to develop waveforms. Although a waveform was successfully implemented there were unexpected issues with regard to the actual behavior of the waveform when implemented on the hardware used for testing.</p> / QC 20100831

<p>Både båtägare och båtproducenter blir allt mer miljömedvetna för var dag som går. Kunskapen om växthuseffekten, regnskogskövling, energiförbrukning och människans hälsa är mycket högre idag än för några år sedan. Båtindustrin är en konservativ bransh och inredningar baserade på exklusiva ädeträarter från regnskogen har historiskt sett varit mycket populära. Dessa material är även idag populära men på grund av den ökande kunskapen om miljöpåverkningar har fler kunder blivit accepterande av alternativa material. Detta medför att båtproducenter nu kan lansera nya ersättande material med bättre miljöegenskaper. Denna fakta bas är grunden till detta examensarbete som handlade om att utveckla och formge en nya mer miljövänlig båtinredning baserad på alternativa material. Projektet utfördes i samarbete med Nimbus Boats vårterminen 2008. Formmässigt har projektets fokus riktats på att framhäva nya material samt skapa ett mer sammanhängande helhetsintryck. Denna rapport behandlar tillvägagångssättet som resulterade i en ny formgivning samt de tre nya materialkompositionerna “Eco Classic”, “Eco Modern” och “Eco Exclusive”.</p> / <p>For each day that passes, boat owners aswell as boat manufactures becomes more and more aware of environmetal effects that are linked to our actions. The knowledge of the greenhouse effect, the uncontrolled felling of the rainforest, the energy consumption and our own health have grown rapidly among the people these last few years. The recrational craft/yacht industry is a very conservative market and interiors based on tropical hardwood has historically aswell as the present time been very popular materials among the boat consumers. However, because of the raised environmental awerness, people tend to be more accepting of alternative materials. This means that the recreational craft manufacturers can develope more environmentally friendly materials in order replace the traditional materials or to introduce new materials as an selection opportunity. This information is some of the facts that formed this thesis and the assignment where to develope and design a new more enviromental friendly boat interior. This thesis was completed in the spring of 2008 in cooperation with Nimbus Boats AB. The design of the interior has focused on accenting the new materials in the right way aswell as to add a more homogeneous formlanguage to the interior. This repport describes the methdology and result of the thesis which resultet in a new interior design together with the three new materialcompositions named ”Eco Classic”, ”Eco Modern” and ”Eco Exclusive”.</p>

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The aims of this project were to study the immobilisation of microorganisms and the use of immobilised cell preparations in biochemical reactors. One particular process, the biodegradation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs), was chosen as a model system. Volatile fatty acids are compounds which are commonly found in odorous wastes and so can present a pollution problem. A bacterium was isolated, which was capable of VFA degradation in a minimal medium. The organism was identified as a strain of Alcaligenes denitrificans. The strain was able to grow on, and degrade, individual straight chain VFAs and mixtures, at concentrations much higher than those used in the isolation conditions. The strain was found to grow at a wide range of pH values, and a moderately wide range of growth temperatures. The strain was also tested for the degradation of VFAs in piggery slurry, but was found to be less effective than the natural population of organisms present in the waste. This bacterium was used to assess various immobilisation techniques, and their suitability for use in bioreactors. Four gel entrapment systems were tested. Conventional polyacrylamide and aluminium alginate gels both resulted in loss of cell viability. Calcium alginate was found to be too fragile for use in bioreactors, and only polyacrylamide hydrazide gel was found to be suitable. Beads of polyacrylamide hydrazide were used for longer term operation in a bubble column reactor, in a series of experiments to study the effects of changes in operating conditions, on bioreactor efficiency. Mathematical correlations were developed to explain the effects. Other parameters such as the mass transfer coefficients were calculated, to assist in the prediction of scale up. The second immobilisation system tested was adsorption to inorganic matrices. Four different types of particle were tested for their ability to adsorb non-growing cells from solution. The capacity to adsorb cells was related to the surface properties of the particles. Celite diatomaceous earth particles were found to have the greatest capacity to adsorb cells. Celite beads could be seeded in this manner, and then operated in a bubble column bioreactor. A biofilm was formed on the beads, which was capable of steady state biodegradation when the reactor was operated at dilution rates above the theoretical maximum for free cell growth. Bubble columns were the most suitable reactor of those tested for use with immobilised cell preparations. Mixing in these reactors was sufficient to provide good mass transfer, but not so violent as to disrupt the immobilised cell particles. Cell immobilisation by adsorption onto Celite was found to have several advantages over the other systems tested. The matrix could adsorb large quantities of cells, resulting in rapid biofilm formation and was also relatively cheap. Therefore, this appears to be an excellent new technique, and its potential applications in industrial processes are discussed.