Adobe Frames Interface Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Adobe Frames Interface - Essay Example Executable files that can be played from a compact disc can also be created using Flash without the need for any additional software.Flash has the capability of capturing user input through the keyboard, mouse, camera or even the microphone.In order to use flash, one does not need to know any programming language even though flash itself contains a scripting language called ActionScript which is object-oriented and offers support for automation through JFL (JavaScript Flash Language). Overview of Action script ActionScript is an object-oriented scripting language which looks much more like JavaScript that is used by Flash to control objects within its movies. It’s based on ECMA-262 specification just like JavaScript. ActionScript enables interactive design in Flash by allowing execution of different actions within a movie (Waldron, 2006). It was initially referred to just as ‘actions’ and was introduced in Flash Player 4. It enabled simple interactivity in Flash a nd it was not as such a complicated language since its semantics and syntax was not anywhere close to ECMAScript. ECMAScript-based syntax was although later applied and thus ActionScript 1.0 was born and introduced in Flash Player 5. ActionScript evolved and its semantics tweaked with the release of Flash Player 6 and 7. In 2003, ActionScript 2.0 was introduced in Flex 1.0 and Flash MX 2004 but it could still work in Flash Player 6 and 7 since it was using an object model similar to that of ActionScript 1.0 (Waldron, 2006). In Flash Player 9, ActionScript 3.0 was introduced as result of a new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2) which is now the main virtual machine for execution of ActionScript code although support for AVM1 is still provided in order to accommodate earlier versions of ActionScript. ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0 ActionScript 2.0 was introduced in Flash MX 2004. Although it still utilized the same object model as ActionScript 1.0, it is well equipped for comp lex and larger applications. It adds some few new runtime capability and functionality by improving object-oriented programming in Flash through the introduction of syntax and semantics that is object-oriented. ActionScript 1.0 lacked an official vocabulary for the creation of objects and classes even though it was considered to be object-oriented. In ActionScript 1.0, prototypical objects were used as classes since there was no provision of class keyword for class creation and extend keyword for establishing inheritance which ActionScript 2.0 now provides thus making the language more familiar to those programmers with OOP backgrounds. ActionScript 2.0 has also made it possible for the creation of Java-like interfaces via the use of the interface statement. ActionScript 1.0 did not offer support for user interfaces. In ActionScript 1.0, the file extension for class files was .as which could be defined in in-line code or external files. ActionScript 2.0 now introduces a .class exten sion for class files and requires them to be defined in external class files. This enables editing class files in Flash MX professional 2004 editor or in any other external editor.

A view from the Bridge Essay Example for Free

A view from the Bridge Essay In these two works the authors invite us to look closely at a womans place in society. In this essay I am going to look at and discuss the ways in which they present the views of women and the expectations of the society in which they live. The reason why I have chosen to compare these two pieces of work is that they both have a similar message to put across. The message is about a womans place and where it should be. Both of the books put women in a lower social standing to men. The pieces of work are not written in the same form but what ever form the writing takes we will be able to find similarities in the message the writers want to express. The writers have a very similar theme but they chose different ways to express it. In A view from a bridge Arthur Miller shows Beatrices struggle with Eddie to let Catherine, their niece, become independent. In The Sons Veto Thomas Hardy shows the control of a son over his mother, Sophy and her inability to do anything to pursue her feelings towards Sam, a man of lower social standing. The two main female characters in Arthur Millers A view from a bridge are Beatrice and Catherine. At the start of the book Catherine and Beatrice both have a deep respect and love for Eddie. The only way that their relationships are different is in the nature of their dependence. Beatrice is Eddies wife and is dependent on him for her living, whereas Catherine is Eddies niece and is only being looked after since both of her parents died when she was young. Eddie is looking after her and paying for her whilst she is growing up and going through education until she is independent. At this point Eddie has control over Beatrice and Catherine but as the story progresses, and with the introduction of Rodolfo, Catherine begins to loose her respect for Eddie and consequently Eddie begins to loose his control over her. Catherine and Beatrice have a large enough age gap to have slightly different social standings. Beatrice is of an era when women were only given basic education, and then were expected to do manual work or raise a family and become a housewife whilst the husband provided for all of the needs of the family. Catherines generation was slightly different in that they were more likely to go on to further education and then work. This may not have included the highly skilled jobs, such as doctors, but at least they were not so completely dependant on a husband. Beatrice seems a little wiser than Catherine in the way that she can see through Eddie and can guess what he is thinking. She can see what is going to happen but she is so naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve as to believe she can change the outcome. Catherine believes that Beatrice is bitter in the way that she is trying to get Catherine to see Eddies true intentions. Catherine cannot understand why Beatrice is disrespectful towards Eddie, the man of the house. Sophy, in the story The Sons Veto, has a very different living status. She is dependant on her dead husbands will, but in a similar way to Beatrice who answers to and obeys Eddie, Sophy obeys her son. However, Sophy cant see that the only reason why her son wants her to stay with their family and not to remarry because, if she did leave to marry another man it, would ruin his reputation and his social standing. The other way in which I think that Sophy, Beatrice and Catherine are similar is that all three come from a working class background. Sophy worked in a vicarage as a maid and Catherine and Beatrices livelihood came from Eddie working on the docks. The nineteenth century woman is Sophy in Thomas Hardys The Sons Veto. In this time there were a lot of things that women werent aloud to do. Some of them were written laws and some social laws, there were things that the lady just wasnt seen to do, wasnt befitting to a lady. This is displayed in the story after Sophy has been widowed and is talking about remarrying. She is thinking of remarrying to a grocery store owner called Sam. This was unacceptable, as she would be marrying down a class. This was not normal to that time, where there were very clear barriers between social classes. Her son hoped his step father would be a gentleman. This is what he believed and it meant a lot to him. He made his feelings very clear when he said I am ashamed of you! It will ruin me! A miserable bore! A churl! A clown! It will degrade me in the eyes of all the gentleman of England! Because Sophy didnt have her sons blessing she could not leave. He had control of all the finances that her late husband left to them to live on. It is a different situation for the woman in A view from the bridge, Catherine and Beatrice. At that time there was an organisation called NOW. This movement was oppressed by the male dominated social structure as a whole, which they saw as pervaded by sexism, despite legal concession towards equality of the sexes. In this period the womens movement had been critical of the use of women as sex objects in advertising, and had also opposed their indoctrination into passive and accommodating roles within the family and society in general. I believe that Beatrice is too old and set in her ways to get deeply involved in womens rights. She understands that women should have equal rights but takes the easy option and accepts where she is and what she is. This is why Beatrice and Sophy are similar because they both only had little or no education and now rely completely on their husband funds. All they have to do in return is to keep a clean house, cook and raise the children. Eddie and Beatrice dont have any children of their own but they have raised their niece Catherine as their own. Catherine is different to Sophy in that she has had a full education and will become financially independent. Sophy was expected to present herself as a lady whenever she was to be in the public eye. Sophy was also expected to do chores and raise children whilst they were home from boarding school. This was all that was expected of a woman of her time. Beatrice was also expected to dress smartly and conservatively. Catherine was a modern girl and dressed to impress. She was well educated and so was less dependant on getting a husband before her good looks left her. But there was still the male dominance that had some control over her. Catherine, I dont want to be a pest, but Im telling you youre walking wavy. Listen, you been giving me the willies the way you walk down the street, I mean it. This shows the male dominance over protecting his woman.

PZT Material for Excessive Vibration

PZT Material for Excessive Vibration In this study it is designed and implemented a robust control technique to suppress excessive vibration and also perform health monitoring of a structure using a single piece of PZT material. The main idea is to use sliding mode controller to achieve the vibration suppression, impedance-based structural health monitoring technique, and to implement sliding mode observer to prevent any undesirable interaction between the health monitoring system and the control system, when they are implemented together. The usage of smart materials to perform nondestructive assessment of structures is of great interest to civil engineering and other engineering fields, since the integrity of the structure is not compromised. In addition, the modern each day more flexible structures bring to researchers in the field the need to find alternatives in vibration suppression.   Implementing health monitoring together with vibration control is therefore the combination of these two need in a practical and economic manner, in the sense that uses the smart materials and control devices/techniques. Smart materials have the ability of changing their properties when subjected to certain external conditions, such as electric or magnetic fields, for example. In this study the smart material used is in the form of piezoelectric patches. The health monitoring technique used in this research is the impedance-based health monitoring, which is based in changes in the structural impedance. The fundamental idea of this approach is to screen the changes in structural mechanical impedance brought on by damage. An experimental set up was performed in a free-free aluminum bar in order to check the applicability of this method. In this experiment, five pairs of PZT patches had been attached to the bar and an electrical impedance analyzer measured the electrical impedance. Damage was simulated by attaching two ten millimeters bolts between the third and the fourth PZT patch. As far as the control technique goes, it is implemented a sliding mode controller, which is designed to attain a robust v ibration control performance in the presence of the uncertainties and disturbances. Sliding mode control is a nonlinear control strategy that adjusts the dynamics of a nonlinear system by forcing the system to slide alongside a surface of the systems regular behavior. One problem this study has to deal with is the health monitoring signal that enters the feedback control loop, since the same PZT patch is used to simultaneously perform health monitoring and to sense the control system in the feedback control loop. In order to try to solve this issue, a sliding mode observer is designed. In order to evaluate the feasibility of the method proposed, both experimental and numerical studies were performed to a single cantilever beam. The controller and observer were designed based on the four lower vibration modes of the beam. The experimental set-up performed to assess the impedance-based health monitoring technique showed that a great change in impedance happens in the region where damage occurs. The experimental and numerical results showed the sliding mode observer was capable of filter the high frequency content that comes from the health monitoring, and the sliding mode control was able to suppress successfully the excessive vibration even after disturbances were introduced. The results from both numerical study and experimental set-up show that this integrated approach can provide significant vibration suppression, while simultaneously detecting damage. The research is important in the sense that brings together the concepts of health monitoring and structural control, and confirms the feasibility of this using sliding mode control/observer and impedance-based health monitoring. However, the study has that are some weaknesses, for example, not much detail is providing regarding the health monitoring of the experimental set-up of the cantilever beam, only vibration suppression results. Also, is not very clear if the results shown are from experimental or analytical evaluation. Only impulse response was verified in this study, and it would be interesting to see how the control behaves in the presence of different types of more complex loads, such as seismic. It is not practical or economically possible to use 4 to 5 PZT patches to every beam a complex civil engineering structure, so the study fails to address how to choose the location of the patches so they can be enough to suppress vibration and detect damage to a more complex struc ture, such as a building.

Shift In Plagued Society :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many aspects of European life changed as a result of â€Å"the Black Death.† Not least among these changes was the shift that occurred among the economic standing of the medieval family and the ultimate â€Å"ushering out† of the feudalistic age. Prior to the plague, society in Europe remained largely feudalistic. Kings had their lords, lords their dukes, dukes their barons, and so on and so forth, with the majority, the peasants, sitting at the bottom virtually providing for all the nobility above them. Providing for the masters of the land was not easy for the peasants, taxes here and there kept there worth low, and their only assets to begin with were the little they had, â€Å"their land, family labor, and capital†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Hanawalt, p112)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Regrettably, for the nobles, things began to shift in the economic make up of Europe. As a noble, one was expected to maintain an army at call in return for land received from the king. Each successively lower noble had less land and a smaller army to maintain, but it remained that in order to be a noble one had many expenses to provide for. As the trade routes began to reopen after the plagues, people began to find the cities much more attractive than the farms that entailed a life of servitude to a lords.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Prior to the plagues, the population of Europe as a whole had been largely stagnant, while there were famines rather frequently, they were merely a result of population overspill, and society as a whole did not topple. (Herlihy, p39) With the introduction of the plague to Europe, the city populations rapidly declined, thus making room in the cities for the farmers who eagerly entered the cities. Because they were, of course, not farming in the cities, people had to take up trades and so Europe began to flourish again economically. But because the people were living in the cities, they had little need to pay taxes to a lord, and thus emerged the middle class, a class that was able to make good money off of their trade, but, unlike the nobility, had no need to spend their money on armies and land maintenance, and could save for themselves. Furthermore, with the sharp drop in overall population peasants who continued to farm had a much smaller population to support, and as some peasants moved to the city, so did the farming peasants move to take over the land left over.

Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell :: Young Lonigan James Farrell Essays

Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell "After they had left the parlor, Studs sat by the window. He looked out, watching the night strangeness, listening. The darkness was over everything like a warm bed-cover, and all the little sounds of night seemed to him as if they belonged to some great mystery. He listened to the wind in the tree by the window. The street was queer, and didn’t seem at all like Wabash Avenue. He watched a man pass, his heels beating a monotonous echo. Studs imagined him to be some criminal being pursued by a detective like Maurice Costello, who used to act detective parts for Vitagraph. He watched. He thought of Lucy on the street and himself bravely rescuing her from horrors more terrible than he could imagine." (Young Lonigan, 62) Studs Lonigan lives in a different world from those around him. Chicago exists as different set of sensations for Studs, who communes with his environment in a language foreign to the masses. The heat and hardness of day are replaced by the creeping and overwhelming softness of the Chicago night; it pushes the toughness out of his body, eliminates the immediacy of things and dulls the viciousness of life as an Irish boy without a future. Farrell writes Studs as a contemplative soul who verges on artistic sensitivity. When he examines his environment he is lost its texture and physical existence. He simply does not belong to the city the way it owns the community, the â€Å"people that lived, worked, suffered, procreated, aspired, filled out their little days, and died† (Young Lonigan, 147). By nature Studs cannot accept the authority or possessiveness of the city, but he is incapable of escape. It is as much a part of him as he is of it; there is a symbiosis at work in Young Lonigan that depends very deeply upon the moments Studs shares with the fading day. Darkness provides us a view of Studs’ psyche that is intensely personal and crucial to understanding him as not only a character, but a representation of a developing personality and moral code. When darkness appears Studs is more vulnerable to both his hopes and his fears. At times he is overcome by visions of pain and hellfire; he is wracked by his Catholic guilt and a perceived lack of purity. â€Å"He puffed and looked about the dark and lonely place.

Shaping Behaviour

Shaping behavior is an aspect of behavior analysis that gradually teaches new behavior through the use of reinforcement until the target behavior is achieved (Wolfgang 272). In order for shaping to be successful, it is important to clearly define the behavioral objective and the target behavior. Also, in order to gradually achieve the target behavior, a teacher must know when to deliver or withhold reinforcement (Wolfgang 37). Many behaviors are taught by shaping, and it is used in many different settings.For example, parents use shaping when they praise a young child profusely the first time he dresses himself, even if he has made a few mistakes. Later, they will only complement the child if he has dressed himself perfectly (Alberto and Troutman, 2003). B. F. Skinner was an important theorist for the behavior analysis model of discipline. His findings about how voluntary actions are affected by what happens immediately after a given act is performed has earned him respect as perhaps the greatest behavioral psychologist of all time.Skinner never concerned himself with classroom discipline but instead dealt with human behavior; it was his followers that saw the applicability of his findings and used Skinner’s principal teachings to devise the procedure of behavior modification using Skinner’s procedure of shaping student behavior intentionally through reinforcement. To increase a student’s behavior, a positive reinforcer is used immediately after the behavior is presented, the premise being that if the child does something and is rewarded, then they are more likely to repeat the act.Any of the following could be used: edible reinforcers (foods and liquids), sensory reinforcers (exposure to a controlled visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or kinesthetic experience), tangible reinforcers (certificates, stickers, etc. ), privilege reinforcers (being first in line, holding the teacher’s book while she reads, etc. ), activity reinforcers (play, special projects), generalized reinforcers (tokens, points, credits, etc. ), and social reinforcers (expressions, feedback, seating arrangements, etc. ).Constant reinforcement must be used to help new behaviors (learnings) become established. Successive approximation, referring to a behavior-shaping progression in which behavior comes closer and closer to a preset goal, is used as skills are being built; students are rewarded for improvement. To maintain the desired behavior once it is established, an intermittent reinforcer, one that is used only occasionally, should be sufficient to use. To decrease a student’s misbehavior, an aversive stimulus after the misbehavior occurs must be presented.Punishment often has negative effects in any behavior modification so it is important that guidelines be established so aversion is not seen as punishment. Skinner believed â€Å"punishment could not extinguish inappropriate behavior. A continuum consisting of five steps moving from the use of minimally to maximally intrusive procedures is recommended. The first step is â€Å"extinction – behaviors that are not reinforced will soon disappear. Extinction is the stopping of positive reinforcers that have been maintaining an inappropriate behavior.The second step is â€Å"differential reinforcement – reinforcing certain behaviors selectively. This step can utilize three techniques: â€Å"1) reinforcing decreased rates of the misbehavior, 2) reinforcing the omission of the misbehavior, and 3) reinforcing incompatible and alternate behaviors. The third step would then be â€Å"response-cost procedure , that is, the removal of a desirable stimuli. In order for this step to be applied, the student must have within his possession certain tangible items that he treasures and that serve as reinforcers for him.The fourth step is â€Å"time out. Time-outs are aversions that deny a student a reinforcement for a fixed period of time. The removal of st imuli is actually a time out from positive reinforcement. Four categories of time out can be used, going from minimum to maximum degrees of aversion. A ‘nonseclusionary time out’ is used to deal with a minor disturbance; the student is not removed from the classroom. The student is removed to the edge of the activity in a ‘contingent observation time out’. The student is able to observe others being reinforced.The next category would be an ‘exclusionary time out’; this involves removal of the student from the activity but does not deny access to the classroom. The fourth category would be a ‘seclusionary time out’ in which the student is completely removed from the classroom. Important in this final step would be a calm manner of return to the classroom with no extended conversation; this helps to eliminate the possibility of the student misbehaving in order to get into a conversation with the teacher. The fifth step in the continu um is â€Å"aversive stimuli.There are three types of aversive stimuli: ‘overcorrecting’ in which a behavioral procedure called positive-practice overcorrecting is used to teach the student how to perform correct behavior through an element of aversion; ‘negative practice-stimuli satiation’ in which there is no intent to teach a new behavior but rather to have the student repeat the inappropriate behavior over and over until the behavior becomes tiresome and the student becomes satiated; and ‘sensory insult’ in which extreme strategies are used to get the child to stop the misbehavior.Sensory insult should be used as a last resort and must be prefaced with a meeting of teachers, administrators, and parents. The definition given of shaping summarizes it completely: â€Å"Shaping is a technique by which a student is reinforced for exhibiting closer and closer approximations to desired behavior. It is useful in teaching new desired behavior and is a natural way of encouraging the student to increase the prevalence of desired behavior. Shaping is most effective for increasing positive behavior.The first step, after defining the behavioral objective, is to assess the present level of the student’s skills. Next, set goals and break the goals into steps. As each step is achieved, the behavior is â€Å"shaped. Positive reinforcement is used for each step toward the desired behavior. This comes in the form of praise and recognition (note the absence of tangible/edible reinforcers! ). The biggest advantage of shaping is that it â€Å"focuses your attention and the student’s attention on positive behavior. It recognizes progress and helps the student feel good about himself.It creates the opportunity for positive interaction between the student and the teacher. The shaping link lists five key steps on â€Å"How to Use Shaping : 1. Identify a desired behavior for this student. Determine the final goal. 2. Identify the student's present level of performance in displaying the desired behavior. 3. List the steps that will eventually take the student from his/her present level of performance to the final desired behavior. These levels of skill should be progressively more demanding. 4. Tell the student that s/he must accomplish step 1 to receive the reward. 5.Once the student has mastered a specified behavior, require that s/he demonstrate the next stage of behavior in order to receive a reward. ________________________________________ Goal of Shaping Behavior Shaping behavior is the aspect of behavior analysis that is the â€Å"teaching of behaviors that are not in the student’s existing repertoire. It involves clearly defining a behavioral objective with a target behavior, delivering or withholding reinforcement at the appropriate time, and thus, being able to shape the student into â€Å"gradual successive approximations of the target behavior

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Research Paper

An arising problem in today’s world is the destruction of the ozone layer because of the emissions and harmful gases that vehicles are giving off. Forget ethanol or biodiesel. The next big thing in automotive fuel may very well be hydrogen. Automakers rapidly are closing in on making hydrogen fuel cell vehicles an everyday fact of life, with several test models set to debut over the next few years. Hydrogen fuel cells to power vehicles are desirable, experts say, because hydrogen is a renewable fuel that can be used to create electricity to run cars. A chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen produces the electric power, and when pure hydrogen is used, the only emission from the tailpipe is harmless water vapor. Many people are asking, â€Å"Why fuel cells? † The gasoline engine in a conventional car is less than 20% efficient in converting the chemical energy in gasoline into power that moves the vehicle, under normal driving conditions. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which use electric motors, are much more energy efficient and use 40-60 percent of membrane to the other side of the cell, the stream of negatively-charged electrons follows an external circuit to the cathode. You can read also Thin Film Solar Cell This flow of electrons is electricity that can be used to do work, such as power a motor. On the other side of the cell, oxygen gas, typically drawn from the outside air, flows through channels to the cathode. When the electrons return from doing work, they react with oxygen and the hydrogen protons (which have moved through the membrane) at the cathode to form water. This union is an exothermic reaction, generating heat that can be used outside the fuel cell. The future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles depends on advances in four areas: the hydrogen source, the distribution infrastructure, the on-board fuel tank and the on-board fuel cell. Hydrogen must be made from carbon-free renewable sources before fuel-cell vehicles can make a dent in the climate problem. One idea is to make the hydrogen by splitting water using electricity from wind farms, or solar panels. Once the hydrogen is made, it must be distributed via special pipelines and tankers to an extensive network of hydrogen refueling stations, which have yet to be created yet. Once in the tank, fuel cell vehicles must store enough hydrogen to go several hundred kilometers between refueling stops. Liquid hydrogen requires insulated tanks at -253*C. so most companies have chosen to compress the hydrogen inside high-strength carbon fiber tanks. The purpose of the fuel cell is to convert hydrogen to electric power. The challenge is to make it light, cheap, robust and durable — yet powerful enough to run the engine, lights and air conditioning. Hydrogen fuel cells, while about twice as efficient as internal-combustion engines using gas, cost nearly 100 times as much per unit of power produced, critics note. And hydrogen is explosive. It ignites at a wider range of concentrations than natural gas and requires less energy to ignite, Michael D. Amiridis, chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of South Carolina, told the Web site and gas-electric hybrid cars advocate hybridcars. com. â€Å"It’s scary – you cannot see the flame,† Amiridis said. Still, automakers are pushing ahead. â€Å"What we can do from our side is to show that technology is mainly feasible, and we have many corporate projects in this area,† said BMW’s corporate communications manager Andreas Klugescheid. It’s North America Engineering and Emission Test Center in California, for example, has been testing two BMW Hydrogen 7 prototypes that run on both hydrogen and gasoline, using a dual-fuel engine and two separate fuel tanks. With the push of a button on its steering wheel, the Hydrogen 7 can run on either hydrogen or gasoline. It can go 125 miles on its hydrogen mode and 300 on its gasoline mode, thus limiting the possibility that its driver might be stranded, given that there’s only one hydrogen filling station in California, near Los Angeles. Along with the hydrogen fuel cells' high efficiency (from 40-70%), the possibility of utilizing both heat and electricity from them will make a significant contribution to reducing atmospheric emissions. For example, a fuel cell operating at 60% efficiency would emit 35-60% less CO2 at the fossil fuel stage and 80% less from hydrogen. Both GM and Honda are hoping to bypass concerns about the lack and cost of developing hydrogen filling stations by creating home hydrogen refueling devices that would allow cars to be refilled overnight in garages. Much of the push for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles is aimed at putting the public at ease through demonstration models and projects Energy sources of the future will have to be cleaner and more efficient than current sources – fuel cells fulfill these requirements. Several challenges remain before we will see wide-spread commercialization, mainly because of restrictions with size, cost, reliability and safety, but an environmentally-friendly source of power is definitely on its way.