Kaffee Kostuum: A Dilemma in Retail Financials

John Dong, the founder and CEO of Kaffee Kostuum developed the idea of Kaffee Kostuum in his own MBA capstone project five years ago. Shortly after graduation, he received seed money from business angels, as well as a favorable bank loan. His value proposition was clear from the beginning: “Be a provider of an unlimited variety of affordable suits, directly available from stock.” The idea sprang from his frustration with two less-than-ideal circumstances: He either had to wait four weeks to get a pricey tailor-made suit or purchase from among the limited selection of affordable suits in his local department store. To keep his company's prices down, Dong worked with a production unit in Vietnam.

Building Meaning: Constructing New Word Knowledge from Simple Statistics

We can understand and express an unlimited variety of meaningful ideas using language. This remarkable ability depends on the fact that as we learn words, they become organized according to meaningful, semantic links, such as those connecting apple, juicy, eat, and pear. Extensive computational evidence attests that everyday language is rich in statistical regularities that could, in principle, drive the formation of these links: (1) Direct co-occurrence (e.g., eat - apple) may foster links between words that can be combined to express meaningful ideas, and (2) Shared patterns of co-occurrence (e.g., apple and pear both co-occur with eat) may foster links between words similar in meaning. Here, we investigated whether humans can harness these simple but powerful statistics to integrate new words into their existing networks of organized word knowledge. In three reported experiments (N=128), participants came to link novel with familiar words based on both direct and shared patterns of co-occurrence following mere exposure to sentences containing these statistics. This novel finding highlights a potentially key role for co-occurrence regularities in building the organized word knowledge that is fundamental to our unique fluency with language.

Die Auflösung der Städte

From the summer of 1918 Bruno Taut had been collecting political and, above all, socialist texts. He prepared excerpts from essays on urban and land issues in such a way that, together with 30 handwritten drawings, they describe the earth's surface as a "good dwelling" for everyone. In his opinion, the prerequisite for this was the elimination of all cities and states. Taut's aim was to show the consequences of an even distribution of people under the conditions of a need arising from the inner necessity of each individual. The book should enable its readers to reflect “on what has to be considered in the present when building new settlements. Their unlimited variety of shapes could almost be called vegetable and organic. “The Dissolution of Cities”, published in August 1920, was Bruno Taut's fourth book of utopian architectural visions after “Die Stadtkrone” (1917/1919), “Alpine Architecture” (1918 / February 1920), and “Der Weltbaumeister” (June 1920).

CORRELATION OF SPEECHOLOGY AND FUNCTIONAL STYLISTICS OF AN ACADEMIC TEXT

This article represents the research of interpretative (subjective) approach to the correlation of adjacent linguistic branches — speechology and stylistics of an academic text. The explanatory cognitive-discursive and stylistic approach to solving the problem relies on the principles of the functional style concept developed by the Perm Scientific School led by Prof. M. N. Kozhina, in particular, on the unity of two sides of text — the linguistic one (that is its meaning structure) and the extralinguistic one (its meaning as a given). The unlimited variety of particular texts (even only in the academic and cognitive sphere of human activities) is one of significant reasons for applying a “soft” interpretative approach for the object analysis in speechology and functional stylistics (this approach always depends on the subject of analysis and is therefore subjective). The meaning text structure has a categorical and gradual character and that is why it correlates with the issue of the model academic text. Through the imposition of categories/parameters of this “categorical thermometer”, the speech phenomena are qualified as style-forming (that is significant for stylistics of academic speech) and non-style-forming (or discursive) which are significant for speechology. The extralinguistic base correlates with the factors which are located on the scale “farther — closer” against the subject of cognitive activity. “Farther” is a form of public conscience (corresponding type of activity and thinking), “closer” is a style of academic thinking, a personal cognitive style, an individual speech style of an academic, a language personality. The dominant and style-forming factors strongly influence the selection and appropriate use of language units, creation of a text by an author and perception of a text by a reader, as well as the interpretation of a text by a researcher in the field of functional stylistics. The academic text is being formed under the influence of differently orientated factors (towards the object and the subject), which are discursive and non-style-forming in the framework of one style. The discursive factors can operate as strong ones and weak ones (peripheral, optional) in the framework of one style. Their impact is comprehensive and appropriate as well as implicit and diverse — that is why their further differentiation is interpretative (subjective). The focus of speechology is just the research of non-style-forming extralinguistic factors.

A Novel 3-D Braiding Technology, Complex Shape Preforms and Composites

A brief overview of 3-D braiding technology and its two major branches, “row and column” and “rotary” braiding, opens the paper. An innovative 3-D braiding process that has been recently patented and implemented in a fully automated multi-modular industrial scale machine is introduced next. The machine enables producing complex, continuously variable shape preforms for composite structures. Each module of the machine incorporates some number of horngears with four yarn carriers placed on each of them. A novel gate switch mechanism, based on the gripping fork controlled rotation, provides smooth transfer of yarn carriers between adjacent horngears. Each gripping fork is controlled individually, thus allowing fabricating practically unlimited variety of complex cross section 3-D braided preforms. Examples of manufactured braided products include rectangular bars, T-, I- and J-stiffeners, box-beams, hollow tubes, etc. Results and discussion of mechanical characterization of 3-D braided carbon and E-glass composites conclude the paper.

Some Uses of Spectral Classification in HR Diagrams

The MK spectrum-luminosity class diagram (S-LC diagram) between types 09 and G0 is a two-dimensional array containing approximately 100–150 information elements; each information element is a single cell denoted by a spectral type and a luminosity class. These individual, non-dimensional cells (i.e. AO III) can be considered as carriers of observational information toward the HR diagram. Some categories of peculiar spectra (for example, spectra resembling that of the “silicon star” θ Aur) can be attached to certain cells, and can be considered as local perturbations upon the underlying continuity of the spectrum-luminosity class sequences. By such a procedure, the S-LC diagram cells can be considered open-ended, in that progressive additions to the cells can be made indefinitely into the future. Such a procedure can incorporate successfully an unlimited variety of “normal” and “peculiar” categories of spectra - both those already known and those still to be discovered. A morphological system that is unitary thus comes into existence - a system of considerable astrophysical interest. The translation of the detailed language of this system into that of the classical HR diagram is a task for the future.

Mechanical Engineering in the Industries of the North-East

The industries of the North-east, to which mechanical engineering contributes so much, are to be seen against their historical background. Much of the developmental impetus came originally from the needs of the coal industry but the transformations wrought by technology have led to the present wide spread of industries among which coal, though vital, is no longer dominant. Notwithstanding the introduction of lighter industries, the mechanical engineer in the North-east is still mainly concerned with the heavier industries though in an almost unlimited variety of forms.

The diurnal variation of magnetic disturbance in high latitudes

1―The effect of natural disturbance on the earth’s magnetic field at any one place is at least twofold: (i) to introduce a regular variation (S d ) periodic within the day and additional to, as well as different in type from (except in a limited region round the magnetic axis pole), the variation associated with quiet days (S q ); and (ii) to suppose on S d irregular changes which may either be of the distinctive type peculiar to large storms especially in low latitudes and generally preceded by the particular type of perturbation known as a sudden commencement, or the changes in the field may be of the apparently nondescript class which comprises an unlimited variety of short-period irregular oscillations. Of these effects of disturbances S d is definitely a local time phenomenon: the sudden commencement with subsequent depression in the horizontal component of the field as definitely follows universal time. For the irregular and unclassified oscillations in moderate and high latitudes a diurnal variation in their incidence has been shown to exist for a few isolated localities. But in the general view it is not known whether this aspect of disturbance is controlled by local or universal time. Nor is it known whether the form of the diurnal variation in disturbance (which variation we shall denote by D) varies in any systematic way with latitude.