Search results for "NICS"

The Influence of Instructional Practices on Reading Motivation in Finland

2018

Although the differences between individuals in language and literacy skills and motivation to read start before entering school, teachers and their instructional practices play an important role in the development of reading skills and the various aspects of motivation, especially children’s interest in reading. Interest in reading has been reported to contribute to the reading activity and to the amount of reading which, in turn, promote students’ reading performance. It has been assumed that children’s previous success with learning the basics of reading has provided them with positive feedback about the learning situation, thereby strengthening their interest in reading. Teachers and th…

Shape optimization for Stokes problem with threshold slip boundary conditions

2017

This paper deals with shape optimization of systems governed by the Stokes flow with threshold slip boundary conditions. The stability of solutions to the state problem with respect to a class of domains is studied. For computational purposes the slip term and impermeability condition are handled by a regularization. To get a finite dimensional optimization problem, the optimized part of the boundary is described by B´ezier polynomials. Numerical examples illustrate the computational efficiency. peerReviewed

Friction of Shear-Fracture Zones

2017

A shear fracture of brittle solids under compression undergoes a substantial evolution from the initial microcracking to a fully formed powder-filled shear zone. Experiments covering the entire process are relatively easy to conduct, but they are very difficult to investigate in detail. Numerically, the large strain limit has remained a challenge. An efficient simulation model and a custom-made experimental device are employed to test to what extent a shear fracture alone is sufficient to drive material to spontaneous selflubrication. A “weak shear zone” is an important concept in geology, and a large number of explanations, specific for tectonic conditions, have been proposed. We demonstra…

Fabrication, Electrical Characterization and 1/f Noise Study of Submicron-sized Superconducting Tunnel Junctions

2016

Is There Any Hope for Developing Automated Translation Technology for Sign Languages?

2021

This article discusses the prerequisites for the machine translation of sign languages. The topic is complex, including questions relating to technology, interaction design, linguistics and culture. At the moment, despite the affordances provided by the technology, automated translation between signed and spoken languages – or between sign languages – is not possible. The very need of such translation and its associated technology can also be questioned. Yet, we believe that contributing to the improvement of sign language detection, processing and even sign language translation to spoken languages in the future is a matter that should not be abandoned. However, we argue that this work shou…

Geophysical study of an landslide in northern Sicily

2002

The San Fratello area in the Nebrodi Mountains (northern Sicily) is a region of high instability. It has suffered many devastating occurrences, which have hit and destroyed the village of San Fratello. At present the area is still subject to a high landslide risk. A series of geophysical surveys have been carried out with the aim of determining the thickness and dimensions of the landslide body as well as some tectonic features, in order to gain insight into the evolution of the landslide. The following geophysical techniques have been used: borehole seismic tomography, i.e. down-hole tomographic seismic soundings (DH TSS), time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) soundings and georadar profiling…

Geomorphological and geophysical investigations to study the landslide affecting the archaeological site of abakainon

2016

In recent years, a detailed archeoseismological investigation has been carried out in the necropolis of Abakainon in order to identify traces of an ancient earthquake. Although the identification of seismic damage was undoubtedly attributed to the 1st century AD earthquake, it was hypothesised that the level of damaging observed in the necropolis, as well as the counter slope tilting of the tomb basements may have also caused by a seismo-induced landslide, which produced locally an amplification of the seismic shaking. In order to identify the landslide, on which the Greek site lies, detailed geomorphological and geophysical surveys have been carried out. The research was directed to the ac…

Modelling landslides in unsaturated slopes subjected to rainfall infiltration using material point method

2016

This paper presents a dynamic fully coupled formulation for saturated and unsaturated soils that undergo large deformations based on material point method. Governing equations are applied to porous material while considering it as a continuum in which the pores of the solid skeleton are filled with water and air. The accuracy of the developed method is tested with available experimental and numerical results. The developed method has been applied to investigate the failure and post-failure behaviour of rapid landslides in unsaturated slopes subjected to rainfall infiltration using two different bedrock geometries that lie below the top soil. The models show different failure and post-failur…

Effects of the foot evolution on the behaviour of slow-moving landslides

2011

The paper presents a time-dependent 2D numerical model which has been developed with the purpose of highlighting the effects of the slope foot evolution on the behaviour of slow-moving landslides. The model allows to quantitatively analyse how foot mass variations can influence the stability and the movement rates of the landslide. The landslide body is modelled as composed of two rigid blocks sliding on two different planes and interacting through a common boundary, which position is assumed fixed during the analysis. A finite difference approach is used to discretize the time. For each time increment, changes in model parameters are allowed, including variations in shearing resistances, g…

Optimized Deposition of Graphene Oxide Langmuir-Blodgett Thin Films

2014

Abstract Single sheet graphene (SG) is an innovative transparent material with high electrical and thermal conduction the use of which in transparent electrodes instead of traditional materials improves the performance of optoelectronic devices. In this study, graphene oxide (GO) has been obtained by a modified Hummer`s method followed by an advanced technique of water removal (lyophilisation). The Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method was applied to transfer GO from suspension to substrate. To optimize the deposition process, as suspending and spreading solvents the benzene and benzene/methanol mixtures were chosen instead of previously studied water suspensions. The number of GO layers in suspens…