Uncovering the Patterns of United States Oil Diversification Motivations via a neo-Coxian Interpretation

This thesis develops and applies neo-Coxian analysis to understand patterns of US oil diversification motivations. Because mainstream IR approaches lack a historical perspective and do not consider reflexivity due to their overt rationalism, a historicism method is employed to uncover the motivations for US oil diversification in this research. Critical Theory, which prioritizes a ‘holistic view’ of IR, helps to uncover these motivations through analysis of oil diversification processes, to understand how they have changed when viewed from a duration-based perception which includes a ‘diachronic’ time period and also a ‘synchronic’ one moment snapshot. Whereas rational IR approaches are supported by established methodologies, researching from a reflexivity perspective requires innovative methodological strategies. Here, three cases were chosen to examine US oil diversification motivations, namely the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War and the Arctic Drilling in the context of Energy Revolution. All are considered key cases for illustrating such motivations. Primary data was collected from official archives to identify how political agents have viewed oil diversification, within the three case studies. Semi- structured elite interviews with social actors (e.g. policymakers, business, NGOs) were also conducted to support data collection. The theoretical analysis shows that Coxian Critical theory can explain US oil diversification motivations and can help to uncover the patterns of these motivations through the interaction of ideas, material capabilities and institutions, thereby providing an original contribution to knowledge. However, when a Coxian interpretation is reviewed, social dynamics as a new structural sphere arises as one of the important factors of US oil diversification motivations in the new millennium. The research finds that the patterns of US oil diversification motivations can be classified under: 1. oil politics, 2. domestic politics and 3. foreign policy. Moreover, there are also contradictions (i.e. 1. economy-biosphere, 2. national-state interests and 3. national-transnational benefits) that are the products of the system, which should be accepted as patterns and triggers of the system. However, their existence is not persistent and depends on the context in which they are created

The Concept of Curiosity in the Practice of Philosophy for Children

Philosophy for Children is, at its core, an educational movement that started in the 1970s and it is currently practiced in over 60 countries. Rather than teaching children philosophy, it aims to develop thinking, inquiry and reasoning skills by means of intellectual interaction and by questioning both with the facilitator and amongst themselves. Thus it creates a community of inquiry. This movement has created a sound literature within philosophy of education which indirectly relates to issues in meta-philosophy, epistemology and philosophy of childhood. Despite the fact that Philosophy for Children is a movement which is predominantly based on questioning and inquiry, there is little emphasis on curiosity within its literature. This is not surprising because even in philosophy literature the concept of curiosity was ignored until quite recently. Producing the fi rst book-length treatment of curiosity within philosophy literature, İnan provides a philosophical framework on how human curiosity is possible and how it finds expression. The notion of inostensible conceptualization, which İnan has developed and central to his theory of curiosity, could be utilized in order to demonstrate the significance of curiosity within Philosophy for Children. Philosophy for Children sessions are usually centered around a philosophical concept such as fairness, egoism, and identity. In this paper I argue that the in-class discussions in Philosophy for Children practice enable children to realize that the concept in question is inostensible for them. That is, they do not have all the knowledge about this specific concept. In order to explain the concept of curiosity in P4C sessions, I have developed two notions: the first notion is curiosity-arouser, which I utilize to explain how the community of inquiry could better concentrate on and discuss the inostensible concept. The second notion is joint curiosity, which I have developed in analogy to the trans-disciplinary notion of joint attention. Similar to the positive impact of joint attention on child development, I argue that joint curiosity has positive outcomes for children’s inquiry and questioning. I explain these notions in detail by providing examples of Philosophy for Children sessions. My overall aim is to emphasize the importance of curiosity in order for this practice to reach its fundamental aims. The practitioners and those who prepare materials have to take into consideration the concept of curiosity and must equip themselves with an understanding of it

XAI-CF -- Examining the Role of Explainable Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Forensics

With the rise of complex cyber devices Cyber Forensics (CF) is facing many new challenges. For example, there are dozens of systems running on smartphones, each with more than millions of downloadable applications. Sifting through this large amount of data and making sense requires new techniques, such as from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). To apply these techniques successfully in CF, we need to justify and explain the results to the stakeholders of CF, such as forensic analysts and members of the court, for them to make an informed decision. If we want to apply AI successfully in CF, there is a need to develop trust in AI systems. Some other factors in accepting the use of AI in CF are to make AI authentic, interpretable, understandable, and interactive. This way, AI systems will be more acceptable to the public and ensure alignment with legal standards. An explainable AI (XAI) system can play this role in CF, and we call such a system XAI-CF. XAI-CF is indispensable and is still in its infancy. In this paper, we explore and make a case for the significance and advantages of XAI-CF. We strongly emphasize the need to build a successful and practical XAI-CF system and discuss some of the main requirements and prerequisites of such a system. We present a formal definition of the terms CF and XAI-CF and a comprehensive literature review of previous works that apply and utilize XAI to build and increase trust in CF. We discuss some challenges facing XAI-CF. We also provide some concrete solutions to these challenges. We identify key insights and future research directions for building XAI applications for CF. This paper is an effort to explore and familiarize the readers with the role of XAI applications in CF, and we believe that our work provides a promising basis for future researchers interested in XAI-CF

The Reshaping Oil and Arms Trade between the United States and GCC: Is the Theory of Complex Interdependence Still Prevailing?

This paper makes use of interdependence theory to analyse the historical development of the economic relations between the GCC countries and the United States. The focus will be on oil and arms trade between the GCC countries and the United States. The results show that while the military and security dependence of the GCC countries on the United States remains relatively intact, the dependence of the United States on the natural resources of the GCC region has decreased. In light of this, the paper suggests that the historical interdependence between the GCC countries and the United States has recently evolved into a unilateral dependence and that the GCC countries’ natural resources are directed towards Asian countries

On the Sound Speed in Neutron Stars

Determining the sound speed $c_s$ in compact stars is an important open question with numerous implications on the behaviour of matter at large densities and hence on gravitational-wave emission from neutron stars. To this scope, we construct more than $10^7$ equations of state (EOSs) with continuous sound speed and build more than $10^8$ nonrotating stellar models consistent not only with nuclear theory and perturbative QCD, but also with astronomical observations. In this way, we find that EOSs with sub-conformal sound speeds, i.e. with $c^2_s < 1/3$ within the stars, are possible in principle but very unlikely in practice, being only $0.03\%$ of our sample. Hence, it is natural to expect that $c^2_s > 1/3$ somewhere in the stellar interior. Using our large sample, we obtain estimates at $95\%$ credibility of neutron-star radii for representative stars with $1.4$ and $2.0$ solar masses, $R_{1.4}=12.42^{+0.52}_{-0.99}\,{\rm km}$, $R_{2.0}=12.12^{+1.11}_{-1.23}\,{\rm km}$, and for the binary tidal deformability of the GW170817 event, $\tilde\Lambda_{1.186}=485^{+225}_{-211}$. Interestingly, our lower-bounds on the radii are in very good agreement with the prediction derived from very different arguments, namely, the threshold mass. Finally, we provide simple analytic expressions to determine the minimum and maximum values of $\tilde\Lambda$ as a function of the chirp mass.Comment: 7 pages + Supplemental Material, 5 figures, comments welcom

DIPL 3851/CORE 3851 Religion, Law, War

This course will examine wars of religion and religious views of war, focusing particularly on how religion has informed the international laws of war. We are living through an era fraught with religious warfare - wars animated by religious conflict and wars that use religious abuse as weapons to demoralize and subdue the enemy. The course will focus on three major religious traditions (primarily Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and set in dialogue their respective views of war, assess their contributions to the contemporary laws of war, and examine particular historical episodes of religious conflict - as well as contrary episodes of religious toleration

A high-performance computing framework for Monte Carlo ocean color simulations

This paper presents a high-performance computing (HPC) framework for Monte Carlo (MC) simulations in the ocean color (OC) application domain. The objective is to optimize a parallel MC radiative transfer code named MOX, developed by the authors to create a virtual marine environment for investigating the quality of OC data products derived from in situ measurements of in-water radiometric quantities. A consolidated set of solutions for performance modeling, prediction, and optimization is implemented to enhance the efficiency of MC OC simulations on HPC run-time infrastructures. HPC, machine learning, and adaptive computing techniques are applied taking into account a clear separation and systematic treatment of accuracy and precision requirements for large-scale MC OC simulations. The added value of the work is the integration of computational methods and tools for MC OC simulations in the form of an HPC-oriented problem-solving environment specifically tailored to investigate data acquisition and reduction methods for OC field measurements. Study results highlight the benefit of close collaboration between HPC and application domain researchers to improve the efficiency and flexibility of computer simulations in the marine optics application domain. (C) 2016 The Authors. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT/MEC) [PEst-OE/EEI/UI0527/2011]; ESA [22576/09/I-OL, ARG/003-025/1406/CIMA]; NOVA LINCS [UID/CEC/04516/2013]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Potential vulnerability of US green hydrogen in a world of interdependent networks

Green hydrogen is viewed as a promising pathway to future decarbonized energy systems. However, hydrogen production depends on a few critical minerals, particularly platinum and iridium. Here, we examine how the supply of these minerals is subject to vulnerabilities hidden in interdependent global networks of trade and investment. We develop an index to quantify these vulnerabilities for a combination of a target country, an investing country, an intermediary country and a commodity. Focusing on the US as the target country for the import of platinum and iridium, we show how vulnerability-inducing investing countries changed between 2010 and 2019. We find that the UK is consistently among investing countries that can potentially induce US vulnerabilities via intermediary exporters of platinum and iridium, with South Africa being the primary intermediary country. Future research includes incorporating geopolitical factors and technological innovations to move the index closer from potential to real-world vulnerabilities.Introduction Indirect vulnerabilities through trade and investment Results Vulnerability-inducing investing countries over time Temporal pattern of top 20 vulnerability-inducing investing countries over time Discussion Limitations of the study and future wor

Developing lean and responsive supply chains : a robust model for alternative risk mitigation strategies in supply chain designs

This paper investigates how organization should design their supply chains (SCs) and use risk mitigation strategies to meet different performance objectives. To do this, we develop two mixed integer nonlinear (MINL) lean and responsive models for a four-tier SC to understand these four strategies: i) holding back-up emergency stocks at the DCs, ii) holding back-up emergency stock for transshipment to all DCs at a strategic DC (for risk pooling in the SC), iii) reserving excess capacity in the facilities, and iv) using other facilities in the SC’s network to back-up the primary facilities. A new method for designing the network is developed which works based on the definition of path to cover all possible disturbances. To solve the two proposed MINL models, a linear regression approximation is suggested to linearize the models; this technique works based on a piecewise linear transformation. The efficiency of the solution technique is tested for two prevalent distribution functions. We then explore how these models operate using empirical data from an automotive SC. This enables us to develop a more comprehensive risk mitigation framework than previous studies and show how it can be used to determine the optimal SC design and risk mitigation strategies given the uncertainties faced by practitioners and the performance objectives they wish to meet

Whirl measurements on leakage flows in turbomachine models

The beneficial effects claimed for whirl control devices demonstrate that the dynamic behavior of rotors is influenced by the fluid whirl in shaft and balance drum seals. The present paper reports results from two series of experiments, the first on the factors affecting the whirl at the seal inlet, and the second on the variation of whirl velocity along the seal. In both cases the LDA measurement technique required the clearance between the fixed and rotating parts of the models to be substantially greater than occurs in real machines, but the results are indicative nevertheless. Experimental and theoretical results are given for the radial distribution of whirl velocity in the gap between impeller shroud and pump casing. Results of tests with modified stator surfaces are also shown. This work leads naturally into the second series of experiments where some preliminary measurements of velocity distribution in the clearance between a fixed stator and a rotating shaft are reported for a range of inlet whirl conditions