The research question that motivates this study is: how might I, together with a collective of dance artists, explore stability while embracing instability? Looking at the precarious lives of independent dance artists in the context of Europe, this research seeks ways to understand and cope with the various unstable aspects that come with this lifestyle and profession. I place this study in relation to current economic trends where the individual is increasingly in focus, with very few social security rights, and where the dancer is often faced with solitary living and working situations. Furthermore, today’s dancers are often no longer working for a single choreographer, nor solely working as a dancer – but are rather entering many different projects and roles, arguably contributing to a life constantly subject to change. In this research, together with a group of dance artists, I explore understandings of instability and stability, and furthermore investigate how collective action might reinforce senses of stability. I, as the researcher, have applied a performative, practice-led research methodology, along with support from post-humanist/feminist theories. The findings of this research demonstrate how instability can be viewed as a state of not knowing within the precarious life of a dance artist but also within creative processes, and that trust is important in order to cope with the unknown. The findings have further led me to discuss the complexity and entangling of stability and instability, unfolding in a joint phrasing of in/stability, where I discuss how the fluid practice of dance not only corresponds with the wider socio-political landscape but also to an ever-changing world.  Keywords: independent dance artist; precariat; collective; leadership; collaboration; diffractive analysis

1 Independent administrative agencies Abstract Independent administrative authorities have emerged as an alternative to the classical administration, which was interwoven with shortcomings resulting from its organization. The answer to some of these failings was to be the independence of agency, which promised to eliminate the risk of political or economic influence, promote greater transparency and efficiency through expert-based leadership. However, independent agencies, while proving to be functional, were set up chaotically and unconceptually across diverse states, leading to them being perceived as marginal anomalies rather than as having a key role in a state's administration. And yet they have been entrusted with the management of so many important areas of everyday life, such as personal data protection, audio-visual broadcasting, energy, competition, etc. Moreover, their unconceptual creation made it impossible for a long time for these agencies to be easily defined and described by their main characteristics, as each agency differed from the other. In addition, there was another problem - their cardinal feature, i.e. independence, became an area of legal friction, because in the classical European civil law we cannot allow an agency that would not be subject to the supreme body of executive power....

In studies where the response variable is measured on a ratio scale, a ratio of means or medians provides a standardized measure of effect size that is an alternative to the popular standardized mean difference. Confidence intervals for ratios of population means and medians in independent-samples designs and paired-samples designs are proposed as supplements to the independent-samples t test and paired-samples t test. The performance of the proposed confidence intervals are evaluated in a simulation study. The proposed confidence interval methods are extended to the case of a 2 × m factorial design that includes propensity score stratification and meta-analysis as special cases. R functions that implement the recommended confidence intervals are provided in the Supplemental Material file, available in the online version of this article, and are illustrated with several examples.

Let G be a graph and G̅ be the complement of G. The complementary prism GG̅ of G is the graph formed from the disjoint union of G and G̅ by adding the edges of a perfect matching between the corresponding vertices of G and G̅. For example, if G is a 5-cycle, then GG̅ is the Petersen graph. In this paper we investigate independent domination in complementary prisms.

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Data on the Web in HTML tables is mostly structured, but we usually do not know the structure in advance. Thus, we cannot directly query for data of interest. We propose a solution to this problem for the case of mostly structured data in the form of HTML tables, based on document-independent extraction ontologies. The solution entails elements of table location and table understanding, data integration, and wrapper creation. Table location and understanding allows us to locate the table of interest, recognize attributes and values, pair attributes with values, and form records. Data-integration techniques allow us to match source records with a target schema. Ontologically specified wrappers allow us to extract data from source records into a target schema. Experimental results show that we can successfully map data of interest from source HTML tables with unknown structure to a given target database schema. We can thus "directly" query source data with unknown structure through a known target schema.

Since MIT launched the first OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative in 2002, responses from the academic community have ranged from exuberance to angst. Some institutions have been reluctant to adopt a program of open publishing because of concerns about long-term funding and possible adverse effects on paid enrollment. Money is an issue, forcing some organizations that initially created OCW programs to furlough them due to funding challenges. This study examined the cost of converting online distance learning courses to OCW, the impact of opening these courses on paid enrollments, and the long-term sustainability of OCW through the generation of new paid enrollments. As part of this study, Brigham Young University's Independent Study Program (BYU IS) converted three university and three high school courses to OCW. BYU IS provided an option for OCW users to pay regular tuition and enroll in the online course for credit. The average ongoing cost to convert BYU IS courses to OCW was $284.12 per university course and $1,172.71 per high school course. The six opened courses generated 13,795 visits and 445 total paid enrollments in four months. The profit margin on the paid enrollments OCW generated was calculated to be 3.81% for open publishing to be financially self-sustaining at BYU Independent Study.

In 2010, Brigham Young University Independent Study (BYU IS) sponsored a development project for the creation of a second-year high school Russian language learning course. The objectives of the course were to implement the five standards for foreign language learning as constituted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages: communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. The design project is an attempt to implement these principles in an independent distance learning course, with particular emphasis on encouraging meaningful communicative learning in authentic, real-world tasks and contexts. The product of the design is a course deliverable completely online through BrainHoney, a course management system utilized by BYU IS for its courses. The product consists of eleven homogeneous lessons, each with instructional content preparing learners to communicate in a specified context that reflect real-world situations. This paper discusses the obstacles of designing a distance education language learning course, especially facilitating communication in real contexts and the design objective and products geared towards overcoming these obstacles.

Dissolved oxygen (DO) depletion in a water body is governed by two primary mechanisms: biological oxygen demand (BOD) from the water column, and sediment oxygen demand (SOD) from sediments. SOD is the dominant oxygen sink in many water bodies; measurements show as much as 95% of oxygen consumption as attributable to SOD (Truax, Shindala, & Sartain, 1996). Measuring SOD in surface water impoundments is an essential component in evaluating and an important input for modeling the health of a water body. Traditional SOD measurement methods are difficult in deeper waters, such as in reservoirs or lakes, because traditional SOD measurement chambers require direct placement. The goal of this research was to modify an existing SOD chamber design to support deployment and recovery in depths in excess of 5ft, typically from a boat or other floating platform. The design required accurate DO measurements, taken unattended and recorded for several hours to several days, for SOD calculations and other parameters such as cation releases under anaerobic conditions. Using a previously designed chamber, I developed tools and methods to meet these requirements. DO data logger probes were purchased so that DO calculations could be taken without the need of surface support. To mount the chambers inside the previously designed chambers, a new mounting mechanism was designed and installed onto the chamber lids. Deployment and recovery methods and design were developed to ensure the chambers would be recoverable from a boat in deep waters. Previously, the unmodified chambers could not be deployed unattended because of the required power and data link with the surface. Here I present an easily replicated chamber design that allows for remote chamber placement and measurement of SOD in deep waters without the need of SCUBA or other specialized equipment that is traditionally required. The chamber design allows water to circulate through the chambers until they are placed and closed on the sediment bed, at which time the measurements start, ensuring correct initial conditions. During deployment, the data logger will log DO concentrations at predetermined intervals for several hours or days at a time. To recover the chambers, the researcher must only find the buoy attached to the rope and hoist the units back to the surface. Modifications and methods were tested and revised over the course of several months and dozens of tests. Experiments were conducted at various depths, ranging from 12–50ft, which showed the versatility of the chambers. Using this design, other researchers will be able to generate substantial amounts of SOD data at depths that will allow accurate SOD behavior to be included in models of water impoundments.

Liquid crystal (LC) devices can be operated as amplitude modulators and phase modulators. LC amplitude modulation is commonly used in liquid crystal display (LCD) while phase-only modulation is useful for laser beam steering, tunable grating, prism, lens, and other photonic devices. Most LC devices are polarization dependent and require at least one polarizer. As a result, the optical efficiency is low. To enhance display brightness, a power hungry backlight has to be used leading to a high power consumption and short battery life. In a LC phase modulator, the polarization dependent property complicates the laser beam steering system. It is highly desirable to develop new operating mechanisms that are independent of the incident light polarization. In this dissertation, we have developed eight polarization-independent liquid crystal operation principles: three of them are aimed for displays and the other five are for phase modulators. For amplitude modulations, a new polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) and two new dye-doped LC gels are polarizer-free by combining light scattering with dye-absorption effects. In phase modulation, we explore five device concepts: PDLC and Polymer-Stabilized Cholesteric Texture (PSCT), homeotropic LC gels, thin polymer film separated double-layered structure, and double-layered LC gels. In the low voltage regime, both PDLC and PSCT have a strong light scattering. However, as the voltage exceeds a certain level, the phase modulation is scattering-free and is independent of polarization. The homeotropic LC gels do not require any biased voltage and the response time is still fast. Although the remaining phase in these devices is small, they are still useful for micro-photonic device applications. To increase the phase change, thin polymer film separated double-layered structure is a solution. The orthogonal arrangement of top and bottom LC directors results in polarization independence. However, the response time is slow. Similarly, double-layered LC gels are not only polarization independent but also fast response due to the established polymer network.