Aristotle’s Conception of Equity in Context

Aristotle’s discussion of equity (ἐπιείκεια) in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Rhetoric is examined in its proper historical legal and political context in order to present an informed understanding of equity and its role in Aristotle’s thought. Contemporary interpretations have invoked anachronistic legal features, and these interpretations, as a result, have failed to capture the proper understanding of the text. After an examination of relevant features of Athenian legal practice, this thesis argues that the Athenian institution of arbitration exemplifies the proper role of equity, a role in which equity is that type of justice that approaches the higher virtue of friendship. Having developed this understanding of Aristotelian equity, this thesis will examine its treatment in the philosophy of Aristotle’s great scholastic interpreter, Thomas Aquinas, arguing ultimately that Aquinas’s doctrinal commitments prevent him from understanding and embracing equity in this manner developed in this thesis

Influence of Hydrogen Concentration and Distribution on Fracture in Nickel

Hydrogen embrittlement is a main factor in the premature failure of metals under stress. Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, two models were built in order to study how the presence of hydrogen at interstitial positions within the nickel lattice affects how it fractures. The first model was a 3D single crystal nickel sample, while the other was the same nickel model but with different concentrations and locations of hydrogen positioned at or near the crack tip. Two aspects of fracture were studied and compared between the different simulations: the crack tip velocity and dislocation nucleation from the crack tip. Analysis of the simulations shows that different concentrations of hydrogen effect both aspects of fracture in nickel, while the size of the region containing hydrogen has no influence whatsoever. The crack growth initially accelerates when there is hydrogen in the system, indicating that the hydrogen enhanced decohesion (HEDE) mechanism is acting. An increase in dislocation nucleation at the crack tip is caused by the action of the hydrogen enhanced localized plasticity (HELP) mechanism

A Random Access Protocol for Pilot Allocation in Crowded Massive MIMO Systems

The Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology has great potential to manage the rapid growth of wireless data traffic. Massive MIMO achieves tremendous spectral efficiency by spatial multiplexing of many tens of user equipments (UEs). These gains are only achieved in practice if many more UEs can connect efficiently to the network than today. As the number of UEs increases, while each UE intermittently accesses the network, the random access functionality becomes essential to share the limited number of pilots among the UEs. In this paper, we revisit the random access problem in the Massive MIMO context and develop a reengineered protocol, termed strongest-user collision resolution (SUCRe). An accessing UE asks for a dedicated pilot by sending an uncoordinated random access pilot, with a risk that other UEs send the same pilot. The favorable propagation of Massive MIMO channels is utilized to enable distributed collision detection at each UE, thereby determining the strength of the contenders' signals and deciding to repeat the pilot if the UE judges that its signal at the receiver is the strongest. The SUCRe protocol resolves the vast majority of all pilot collisions in crowded urban scenarios and continues to admit UEs efficiently in overloaded networks.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 16 pages, 10 figures. This is reproducible research with simulation code available at https://github.com/emilbjornson/sucre-protoco

Finance, growth and social fairness:Evidence for Latin America and Bolivia

This PhD thesis explores the role of finance in promoting economic growth and social fairness. Our case studies concentrate on Latin America and the Caribbean, and on Bolivia, a developing region and a country for which the relationship between finance, growth, and social fairness turns out to be particularly important. Bolivia is considered as one of the poorest and most unequal countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Poverty and inequality are not only deeply rooted in the country, but they are also among the most distinctive features of the region. In general, economic growth in Latin American countries has not met expectations, regardless of significant institutional reforms and an inherent potential to fare better. Consequently, the identification of factors that would promote economic growth and social fairness in Bolivia and the region becomes transcendental and necessary. At the same time, the study seeks to contribute to the scarce regional and single country-level research in this field. To pursue this goal, theoretical and empirical literature has been reviewed and original empirical evidence prepared. Moreover, the goal of this research is to conduct an integral investigation that does not rely only on macroeconomic evidence (at the regional and single country level) but also uses microeconomic evidence regarding the role of value chain financial mechanisms in a value chain case study. Throughout the thesis, different dimensions of finance such as financial depth, access to finance, and institutional diversification have been taken into account. Several of these aspects of finance have recently been studied in the empirical literature. Additionally, regarding the limited access to finance for certain agents in Bolivia – in particular, small-sized firms and rural and poor households – value chain finance has been considered as an important alternative for making financial services accessible. The results of this dissertation have implications for the design of financial and social policies for the Latin American and Caribbean region and for Bolivia