The Last Word

The last word, as defined by Webster\u27s dictionary, describes the final remark in a verbal exchange, the power of a final decision, a definitive statement or treatment, and the most advanced, up-to-date, or fashionable exemplar of its kind. I venture to explore and utilize the meaning of this well-known idiom through the creation of visual artworks that comprise my Master of Fine Art thesis research. Within this body of visual artworks, titled The Last Word, I explore the evolution and realization of self-image through the examination of disparate and reciprocal relationships. Utilizing personal symbolic imagery, provocative text and mixed media processes, I present my last word about my own self-image. This written support paper chronicles the evolution of The Last Word, correlating the creative process with historical and theoretical scholarship

Instrumentation and Experimentation Development for Robotic Systems

Localization of robotic systems is a necessity for control of robotic systems and often requires the use of costly sensors and equipment onboard the robot or installed within a facility. GPS or GNSS sensors are effective for localizing robots in GPSaccessible environments, but do not work as well in dense urban areas or inside fully enclosed buildings, such as factories or warehouses. Sensors such as LiDAR can be costly and require substantial experience and knowledge to utilize as well as potential changes to infrastructure for use. Computer vision-based localization systems offer potential as a localization solution for various applications. A low-cost overhead camera system was developed to localize robotic systems in an indoor facility, aiding the development and verification of algorithms. A visual servoing path following robot was built and developed utilizing Robot Operating System to examine the computer visionbased localization camera system. A track was designed and assembled, and low-cost cameras were mounted in an overhead configuration. A program to track the robots’ position was developed utilizing multiple camera feeds, open-source computer vision tools, and fiducial marker tracking. Utilizing the camera feed from three different cameras and ArUco fiducial markers, localization of a robotic system was conducted in static positions with an average of 0.80% error between the physical measurement and measurement made by the camera system. The path following robot was tracked and the RMS position acquired by the developed localization system compared to that captured by the robot’s onboard camera with an average difference of 1.04 cm

Searching for Songs of the People: The Ideology of the Composers' Collective and Its Musical Implications

The Composers' Collective, founded by leftist composers in 1932 New York City, sought to create proletarian music that avoided the "bourgeois" traditions of the past and functioned as a vehicle to engage Americans in political dialogue. The Collective aimed to understand how the modern composer became isolated from his public, and discussions on the relationship between music and society pervade the radical writings of Marc Blitzstein, Charles Seeger, and Elie Siegmeister, three of the organization's most vocal members. This new proletarian music juxtaposed revolutionary text with avant-garde musical idioms that were incorporated in increasingly greater quantities; thus, composers progressively acclimated the listener to the dissonance of modern music, a distinctive sound that the Collective hoped would become associated with revolutionary ideals. The mass songs of the two Workers' Song Books published by the Collective, illustrate the transitional phase of the musical implementation of their ideology. In contrast, a case study of the song "Chinaman! Laundryman!" by Ruth Crawford Seeger, a fringe member of the Collective, suggests that this song belongs within the final stage of proletarian music, where the text and highly modernist music seamlessly interact to create what Charles Seeger called an "art-product of the highest type.

South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, SCDNR, boating and outboard motor natural disaster recovery plan

The goal of this paper is to establish a plan of action that the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Boating Division could follow to specifically address how the agency would respond in the event a hurricane would impact South Carolina with customer records being lost during a hurricane. Such an event could possibly directly impact SCDNR with consideration of the Marine Resource Division located in Charleston, South Carolina

A study of values of rural and urban Negro families in Alabama with implications for homemaking education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University of Agriculture & Applied Science. College of Education, 1962Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-164

Obesity and immune function relationships.

The immunological processes involved in the collaborative defence of organisms are affected by nutritional status. Thus, a positive chronic imbalance between energy intake and expenditure leads to situations of obesity, which may influence unspecific and specific immune responses mediated by humoral and cell mediated mechanisms. Furthermore, several lines of evidence have supported a link between adipose tissue and immunocompetent cells. This interaction is illustrated in obesity, where excess adiposity and impaired immune function have been described in both humans and genetically obese rodents. However, limited and often controversial information exist comparing immunity in obese and non-obese subjects as well as about the cellular and molecular mechanisms implicated. In general terms, clinical and epidemiological data support the evidence that the incidence and severity of specific types of infectious illnesses are higher in obese persons as compared to lean individuals together with the occurrence of poor antibody responses to antigens in overweight subjects. Leptin might play a key role in linking nutritional status with T-cell function. The complexities and heterogeneity of the host defences concerning the immune response in different nutritional circumstances affecting the energy balance require an integral study of the immunocompetent cells, their subsets and products as well as specific and unspecific inducer/regulator systems. In this context, more research is needed to clarify the clinical implications of the alterations induced by obesity on the immune function