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This biography examines the life of Helen Keller using easy-to-read, compelling text. Through striking historical and contemporary images and photographs and informative sidebars, readers will learn about Keller's family background, childhood, education, and time as a world-renowned activist and speaker. Informative sidebars enhance and support the text. Features include a table of contents, timeline, facts page, glossary, bibliography, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO

Charles Underwood was in the United States Army for more than 31 years from 1941 to 1972. His active military service included command of infantry, armored infantry and armored units from platoon through brigade. Most staff assignments were in information and public affairs. He was a Prisoner of War for the Japanese Imperial Army from 1942-1945 and survived the Bataan Death March. ; The collection consists of slides, photographs, letters, military documents, and other personal documents of Charles Underwood. It includes information on the Bataan Death March as well as the different bases around the world he was stationed at during his time in the Army. ; The collection is organized by the following series: Bataan, Birth Records, Certificates, Correspondence, Drawings, Financial Records, Genealogy, Legal Document, Literary Productions, Medical Records, Memorial, Military Documents, Newspaper, Periodical, Personal Documents, Photographs, Printed Material, Retirement Records, School Records, Scrapbook, and Slides. ; Box 1, Folder 22

Electronic government and electronic participation continue to transform the public sector and society worldwide and are constantly being transformed themselves by emerging information and communication technologies. This book presents papers from the 14th International Federation for Information Processing's EGOV conference (IFIP EGOV 2015), and its sister conference, the 7th Electronic Participation (ePart) conference, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 30 August to 2 September 2015, with the support and sponsorship of the University of Macedonia. Through the years, both of these conferences have established themselves as leading scientific events in their field, providing a forum for scholars to present and discuss their work. Included here are 31 accepted ongoing research papers, grouped under the following headings: eParticipation; policy modeling; open government and smart cities; general e-government; and e-government services; as well as 6 Ph.D. colloquium papers, 5 accepted posters and 3 workshops. With their combination of scientific credibility and rigor and with high relevance to practice, the papers presented here will be of interest to all those whose work involves electronic government and electronic participation. ; Multi Actor Systems ; Technology, Policy and Management

73 92 52 1 ; S ; This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Information Processing and Management. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Information Processing and Management 52 (2016) 73–92. DOI 10.1016/j.ipm.2015.06.003. [EN] In this paper, we investigate the impact of emotions on author profiling, concretely identifying age and gender. Firstly, we propose the EmoGraph method for modelling the way people use the language to express themselves on the basis of an emotion-labelled graph. We apply this representation model for identifying gender and age in the Spanish partition of the PAN-AP-13 corpus, obtaining comparable results to the best performing systems of the PAN Lab of CLEF. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. The work of the first author was partially funded by Autoritas Consulting SA and by Spanish Ministry of Economics under grant ECOPORTUNITY IPT-2012-1220-430000. The work of the second author was carried out in the framework of the WIQ-EI IRSES project (Grant No. 269180) within the FP 7 Marie Curie, the DIANA APPLICATIONS: Finding Hidden Knowledge in Texts: Applications (TIN2012-38603-C02-01) project and the VLC/CAMPUS Microcluster on Multimodal Interaction in Intelligent Systems. A special mention to Maria Dolores Rangel Pardo for her linguistic contribution to this investigation. Rangel-Pardo, FM.; Rosso, P. (2016). On the Impact of Emotions on Author Profiling. Information Processing and Management. 52(1):73-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2015.06.003

This contribution presents an innovative and integrated framework for real-time-process reconciliation and optimization (RTRO) in large continuous open pit coal mines. RTRO-Coal is currently developed, validated, tested and implemented as part of a multi-national multi-partner European Union funded R&D project. The key concept is to promote a shift in paradigm from intermittent discontinuous to a continuous process monitoring and quality management system in large scale coal mining operations. The framework is based on a real-time feedback control loop linking online data acquired during extraction rapidly with a sequentially up-datable resource model. The up-to-date model is integrated with a real-time optimization of short-term sequencing and production control decisions. Improved decisions are expected to lead to increased resource-and process efficiency and support a sustainable extraction of natural resources. This contribution introduces to the framework, discusses main building blocks and illustrates the value added by the means of selected examples. ; Geoscience & Engineering ; Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Over the past decades, road safety in highly-motorised countries has made significant progress. Although we have a fair understanding of the reasons for this progress, we don't have conclusive evidence for this. A new generation of road safety management approaches has entered road safety, starting when countries decided to guide themselves by setting quantitative targets (e.g. 50% less casualties in ten years' time). Setting realistic targets, designing strategies and action plans to achieve these targets and monitoring progress have resulted in more scientific research to support decision-making on these topics. Three subjects are key in this new approach of evidence-based and data-driven road safety management: ex-post and ex-ante evaluation of both individual interventions and intervention packages in road safety strategies, and transferability (external validity) of the research results. In this article, we explore these subjects based on recent experiences in four jurisdictions (Western Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland). All four apply similar approaches and tools; differences are considered marginal. It is concluded that policy-making and political decisions were influenced to a great extent by the results of analysis and research. Nevertheless, to compensate for a relatively weak theoretical basis and to improve the power of this new approach, a number of issues will need further research. This includes ex-post and ex-ante evaluation, a better understanding of extrapolation of historical trends and the transferability of research results. This new approach cannot be realized without high-quality road safety data. Good data and knowledge are indispensable for this new and very promising approach. ; Transport & Planning ; Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Background Violence is a critical public health problem associated with compromised health and social suffering that are preventable. The Centre for Global Health and Health Equity organized a forum in 2014 to identify: (1) priority issues related to violence affecting different population groups in Canada, and (2) strategies to take action on priority issues to reduce violence-related health inequities in Canada. In this paper, we present findings from the roundtable discussions held at the Forum, offer insights on the socio-political implications of these findings, and provide recommendations for action to reduce violence through research, policy and practice. Methods Over 60 academic researchers, health and social service agency staff, community advocates and graduate students attended the daylong Forum, which included presentations on structural violence, community violence, gender-based violence, and violence against marginalized groups. Detailed notes taken at the roundtables were analyzed by the first author using a thematic analysis technique. Findings The thematic analysis identified four thematic areas: 1) structural violence perpetuates interpersonal violence - the historical, social, political and economic marginalization that contributes to personal and community violence. 2) social norms of gender-based violence—the role of dominant social norms in perpetuating the practice of violence, especially towards women, children and older adults; 3) violence prevention and mitigation programs—the need for policy and programming to address violence at the individual/interpersonal, community, and societal levels; and 4) research gaps—the need for comprehensive research evidence made up of systematic reviews, community-based intervention and evaluation of implementation research to identify effective programming to address violence. Conclusions The proceedings from the Global Health and Health Equity Forum underscored the importance of recognizing violence as a public health issue that requires immediate and meaningful communal and structural investment to break its historic cycles. Based on our thematic analysis and literature review, four recommendations are offered: (1) Support and adopt policies to prevent or reduce structural violence; (2) Adopt multi-pronged strategies to transform dominant social norms associated with violence; (3) Establish standards and ensure adequate funding for violence prevention programs and services; and (4) Fund higher level ecological research on violence prevention and mitigation. ; Hyman, I., Vahabi, M., Bailey, A., Patel, S., Gurue, S., Wilson-Mitchell, K., & Wong, J. P-H. (2016). Taking action on violence through research, policy and practice. Global Health Research and Policy. 9(3).

Background: As human populations become more and more urban, decision-makers at all levels face new challenges related to both the scale of service provision and the increasing complexity of cities and the networks that connect them. These challenges may take on unique aspects in cities with different cultures, political and institutional frameworks, and at different levels of development, but they frequently have in common an origin in the interaction of human and environmental systems and the feedback relationships that govern their dynamic evolution. Accordingly, systems approaches are becoming recognized as critical to understanding and addressing such complex problems, including those related to human health and wellbeing. Management of water resources in and for cities is one area where such approaches hold real promise. Results: This paper seeks to summarize links between water and health in cities and outline four main elements of systems approaches: analytic methods to deal with complexity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and multi-scale thinking. Using case studies from a range of urban socioeconomic and regional contexts (Maputo, Mozambique; Surat and Kolkata, India; and Vienna, Austria). Conclusion: We show how the inclusion of these elements can lead to better research design, more effective policy and better outcomes. ; Water Management ; Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Let's talk about basic public speaking -- Book clubs. Part I, The basics -- Book clubs. Part II, Time to discuss -- When authors speak -- Author interviews -- Panel discussions -- Writer-in-residence programs and awards -- One book, one city

The development of large commercial aircraft such as the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787, together with military aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F35, with a large share of composite components of up to 50%, make it necessary for attention to be focussed on the development of new and effective maintenance strategies. In this paper, we address the development of ultrasonic measurement techniques, with a focus on structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques that are able to quickly inspect large structural parts of the aircraft. The combination of real-time SHM techniques, together with the parallel development of automated repair techniques for bonded structures, will make it possible to operate the aircraft at lower costs and for longer periods of time, thereby increasing the economic life of these aircraft structures. ; Aerospace Structures and Materials ; Aerospace Engineering

Sample data plays an important role in land cover (LC) map validation. Traditionally, they are collected through field survey or image interpretation, either of which is costly, labor-intensive and time-consuming. In recent years, massive geo-tagged texts are emerging on the web and they contain valuable information for LC map validation. However, this kind of special textual data has seldom been analyzed and used for supporting LC map validation. This paper examines the potential of geo-tagged web texts as a new cost-free sample data source to assist LC map validation and proposes an active data collection approach. The proposed approach uses a customized deep web crawler to search for geo-tagged web texts based on land cover-related keywords and string-based rules matching. A data transformation based on buffer analysis is then performed to convert the collected web texts into LC sample data. Using three provinces and three municipalities directly under the Central Government in China as study areas, geo-tagged web texts were collected to validate artificial surface class of China's 30-meter global land cover datasets (GlobeLand30-2010). A total of 6283 geo-tagged web texts were collected at a speed of 0.58 texts per second. The collected texts about built-up areas were transformed into sample data. User's accuracy of 82.2% was achieved, which is close to that derived from formal expert validation. The preliminary results show that geo-tagged web texts are valuable ancillary data for LC map validation and the proposed approach can improve the efficiency of sample data collection. ; Hou, D., Chen, J., Wu, H., Li, S., Chen, F., & Zhang, W. (2015). Active collection of land cover sample data from geo-tagged web texts. Remote Sensing, 7(5), 5805-5827. doi:10.3390/rs70505805

The Nanjing Government applied temporary environmental regulations to guarantee good air quality during the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in 2014. We study the effect of those regulations by applying the emission estimate algorithm DECSO (Daily Emission estimates Constrained by Satellite Observations) to measurements of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). We improved DECSO by updating the chemical transport model CHIMERE from v2006 to v2013 and by adding an Observation minus Forecast (OmF) criterion to filter outlying satellite retrievals due to high aerosol concentrations. The comparison of model results with both ground and satellite observations indicates that CHIMERE v2013 is better performing than CHIMERE v2006. After filtering the satellite observations with high aerosol loads that were leading to large OmF values, unrealistic jumps in the emission estimates are removed. Despite the cloudy conditions during the YOG we could still see a decrease of tropospheric NO2 column concentrations of about 32 % in the OMI observations when compared to the average NO2 columns from 2005 to 2012. The results of the improved DECSO algorithm for NOx emissions show a reduction of at least 25 % during the YOG period and afterwards. This indicates that air quality regulations taken by the local government have an effect in reducing NOx emissions. The algorithm is also able to detect an emission reduction of 10 % during the Chinese Spring Festival. This study demonstrates the capacity of the DECSO algorithm to capture the change of NOx emissions on a monthly scale. We also show that the observed NO2 columns and the derived emissions show different patterns that provide complimentary information. For example, the Nanjing smog episode in December 2013 led to a strong increase in NO2 concentrations without an increase in NOx emissions. Furthermore, DECSO gives us important information on the non-trivial seasonal relation between NOx emissions and NO2 concentrations on a local scale. ; Geoscience & Remote Sensing ; Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Brown, C., Shaker, R.R., Gorgolewski, M., Papp, V., & Alkins, S. (2016). Urban resilience in Canada: Research priorities and best practices for climate resilience in cities. [Technical report]. 1-39. Available from: http://digital.library.ryerson.ca/islandora/object/RULA%3A4286

The ministry of land, infrastructures, transportation and tourism (MLIT) of the Japanese government maintains governmental managed river levee for the safety against flood whose total length is more than 10,000 km. The design standard of river levee had been traditionally done based on so called shape based specification, where levee is judged to be safe as long as a section satisfies the specified dimensions. In 2002, this policy had been changed and a new inspection guideline which is based on the modern soil mechanics principles had been introduced. The method mainly consists of the non-stationary seepage analysis followed by the circular slip line stability analysis. The exit gradient and uplift pressure are also checked based on specified safety factors. The way of the safety assessment is that, first a river is divided into so called a continuous strip (CS) which is judged to have similar configurations, geotechnical and hydraulic conditions. The typical length of a CS is half to several km long. Then a representative cross section (RCS) that is considered to represent all the CS section is selected. At RCS, detailed soil investigations are carried out, and the inspection is done to assess the safety of the section for stability and piping. A CS is judged to be safe if all the verification items satisfy the specified safety factor, but judged to be NG (no good) if any of the items could not fulfill the threshold value. The first round assessment at year 2011 indicated, only 60% of the all levee is judged to be safe for all verification items. 25% of the levee could not satisfy the stability requirement, 30% piping requirement, and 14% the both requirements. In the paper, the details of the verification methods are described. Furthermore, some recent flood events are introduced. Finally, further challenges for the second screening of the safety of levee are discussed.