Integration Readiness levels Evaluation and Systems Architecture: A Literature Review

The success of complex systems projects is strongly influenced by their architecture. A key role of a system architect is to decide whether and how to integrate new technologies in a system architecture. Technology readiness levels (TRL) scale has been used for decades to support decision making regarding the technology infusion in complex systems, but it still faces challenges related to the integration of technologies to a system architecture. Integration Readiness Levels (IRL) scale has been elaborated in the last decade to face these challenges, representing the integration maturity between the technological elements of a system. The aim of this theoretical article is to perform a literature review on IRL scale evaluation and on systems architecture, through bibliographic research. Results show the review organized in five topics that surrounds the research objective, presenting the IRL and TRL scales evolution, comparing their evaluation practices, and exploring the architecture complexity of systems. Suggestions for future research are proposed based on these results

Addicts, peddlers, reformers: a social history of opium in Assam, 1826–1947

The thesis offers a social history of opium in colonial Assam by tracing the evolution of representations, perceptions and ideological positions on opium from local, national and transnational perspectives which enables a new mode of reading the province’s specific encounter with colonialism and nationalism. It studies Assam’s history through the prism of opium, particularly the interplay between state and society during the period 1828–1947, and focusses on three groups—addicts, peddlers and reformers—whose interaction defined the terrain of the opium question in order to challenge the economic and nationalist bias in the historiography. It interprets opium as a cultural commodity and social practice and reorients the framework of opium in India from export trade to domestic consumption, using opium addiction in Assam and the global prohibition campaign as the vantage point to explore the interplay between colonial policy, local dissent, nationalism and transnational factors in order to understand the role that opium played in shaping social, cultural and political discourses. The thesis highlights that the opium discourse epitomised the juncture where local phenomenon, national processes and transnational developments overlapped and produced a complex narrative of the intersection of notions of indolence, improvement and industry with modernities, resistance and localisms. As a social biography of opium in colonial Assam, the thesis addresses deficiencies in our understanding of opium in India as well as the wider historiography of opium and enables modes of interpreting Assam’s unique encounter with colonialism and nationalism while also providing a framework to understand the influence of transnational factors in determining local facts. The thesis signals the centrality of transnational perspectives to drug history and is, therefore, both an attempt at recovery of local perspectives and regional specificities in the context of Assam as well as the insertion of locality into the global history of opium

Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe

The conference volume of the Bochumer Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe” outlines the thesis that religion is not a homogeneous cultural phenomenon, but a dense network of diachronically and synchronically differing traditions. ; Readership: All those interested in History of Religion and Religious Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Theology, Asian, Middle East and Islamic Studies

Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe

The conference volume of the Bochumer Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe” outlines the thesis that religion is not a homogeneous cultural phenomenon, but a dense network of diachronically and synchronically differing traditions. ; Readership: All those interested in History of Religion and Religious Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Theology, Asian, Middle East and Islamic Studies

Love, passion and patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine propaganda movement, 1882-1892.

This study investigates the relationship between sexuality and the creation of a Filipino national identity. It focuses on the Filipino patriots Jose Rizal (1861-1896), Marcelo H. del Pilar (1850-1896), Graciano Lopez Jaena (1856-1896), Juan Luna (1857-1899) and Antonio Luna (1866-1899) - ilustrados or 'enlightened' men who were all prominent figures in the campaign for reform conducted in Europe. Through a reading of selected literary works and paintings, this study examines how the ilustrados' notions of masculinity and femininity were influenced by their academic training, their travels overseas and their personal relationships, especially with women. Ilustrado ideas about sex and gender were initially rooted in the emergent bourgeois society of late 19th century Manila, a society whose beliefs and customs adapted those of Catholic Spain. Masculinity was linked to notions of hidalguia, machismo and honour; femininity to notions of modesty, propriety and passivity. Elite society as a whole professed the ideals of courtesy, refinement, good taste and piety encoded in the precepts of urbanidad. In Europe the attitudes of the propagandistas towards issues of sexuality were coloured by their encounters with modem life in the cities where they studied, worked and campaigned - most especially Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and London. The manner in which they defined masculinity and femininity, moreover, became crucially implicated in their patriotic project. They sought to demonstrate the falsity of colonialist jibes about Filipino infantilism, effeminacy and effeteness by physically affirming urbanity and manliness in their dress, grooming and deportment, and courage and virility through duelling. Though the propagandistas were deeply committed to the pursuit of modernity and progress in economic, scientific and philosophical terms, and though generally progressive in their thinking about the social advancement of women, they found the relatively free, uninhibited 'Modem Woman' disturbing, at once alluring and sordid, at once tempting and contemptible. Their publicly professed feminine ideal, posited as the model for women in the emerging Philippine nation, remained essentially conservative. Filipinas were to be virtuous, demure and subordinate; their sexuality to be rigidly limited and confined