Liberty and Equality in British Methodist Thought: From John Wesley to the Present Day.

From its genesis the Methodist movement, which would become the Methodist Church, has had a deep concern for the values and ideas of liberty and equality that comes from its theology and practice; sharing the gospel message amongst the poor and disadvantaged. However, there have been times when the Methodist Church has struggled to develop a theological ethic on human rights that is fully integrated with its theology. Through an exploration of the teachings of John Wesley, the Eighteenth Century leader of the Methodist societies, and particularly those that concerned liberty and the anti-slavery movement and the American Revolution, it is possible to determine key theological tenets in his thought: Wesley’s teaching is that all people have been endowed with liberty by their creator; the liberty of conscience being preeminent among these. Furthermore, that all people should have the integrity of their liberty respected, slavery being an afront to this principle. That in God’s salvation love, being for all people, is recognised when we conceive of people being made by the creator in the natural and political image of God. From this starting point, in Wesley’s theology, it is then possible to explore one of the most significant issues of liberty and equality, or rights, in the 20th century, connected with the 18th century struggles: Racism in society, that permeates into the Church. In examining the Methodist Church’s response to racism, it can be determined to what extent it has endeavoured to implement a radical theological ethic. Moving into the 21st century, examining recent commitments by the Methodist Conference to forge an ‘inclusive church’, with new resources such as the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit, it can be confidently stated that there is a commitment to engaging with a theological approach to liberty and equality issues, that can draw much from our Wesleyan theology, practice and heritage

Letter from John D. Speirs

Letter concerning a position in mathematics or history at Utah Agricultural College

Letters between John D. Speirs and William Kerr\u27s secretary

Letters concerning a position in mathematics or history at Utah Agricultural College

Development of welding techniques and filler metals for high strength aluminum alloys second quarterly report, 1 oct. - 31 dec. 1964

Welding techniques and filler metals for high strength aluminum alloys evaluated by bulge test progra

Electrostatic electron cyclotron instabilities near the upper hybrid layer due to electron ring distributions

A theoretical study is presented of the electrostatic electron cyclotron instability involving Bernstein modes in a magnetized plasma. The presence of a tenuous thermal ring distribution in a Maxwellian plasma decreases the frequency of the upper hybrid branch of the electron Bernstein mode until it merges with the nearest lower branch with a resulting instability. The instability occurs when the upper hybrid frequency is somewhat above the third, fourth, and higher electron cyclotron harmonics, and gives rise to a narrow spectrum of waves around the electron cyclotron harmonic nearest to the upper hybrid frequency. For a tenuous cold ring distribution together with a Maxwellian distribution an instability can take place also near the second electron cyclotron harmonic. Noise-free Vlasov simulations are used to assess the theoretical linear growth-rates and frequency spectra, and to study the nonlinear evolution of the instability. The relevance of the results to laboratory and ionospheric heating experiments is discussed

Characterisation of materials with hyperelastic microstructures through computational homogenisation and optimisation methods.

The constitutive modelling of microheterogeneous materials is a subject of considerable practical and theoretical interest. Among many approaches computational homogenisation is particularly powerful and versatile. This is based on the numerical estimation of the mechanical response of a volume element representing the material's microstructure. This thesis is concerned with computational homogenisation and its particular use in characterising materials with hyperelastic microstructures through an optimisation based methodology. Details of a finite element implementation of the computational homogenisation procedure are presented. These are derived from a variational treatment of the homogenisation problem. Examples of the application of the method to hyperelastic microstructures are reported. Next a procedure to provide a convenient characterisation of the behaviour of composite material is considered. This consists of adopting a conventional explicit model to approximate the macroscopic mechanical behaviour. Parameters of the model are chosen by established optimisation methods so that the macro model best fits the calculated homogenised response of a model of the microstructure. The optimisation based methodology is applied to the problem of modelling the constitutive behaviour of artery walls

Foehn winds in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctic: The origin of extreme warming events

Foehn winds resulting from topographic modification of airflow in the lee of mountain barriers are frequently experienced in the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs) of Antarctica. Strong foehn winds in the MDVs cause dramatic warming at onset and have significant effects on landscape forming processes; however, no detailed scientific investigation of foehn in the MDVs has been conducted. As a result, they are often misinterpreted as adiabatically warmed katabatic winds draining from the polar plateau. Herein observations from surface weather stations and numerical model output from the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) during foehn events in the MDVs are presented. Results show that foehn winds in the MDVs are caused by topographic modification of south-southwesterly airflow, which is channeled into the valleys from higher levels. Modeling of a winter foehn event identifies mountain wave activity similar to that associated with midlatitude foehn winds. These events are found to be caused by strong pressure gradients over the mountain ranges of the MDVs related to synoptic-scale cyclones positioned off the coast of Marie Byrd Land. Analysis of meteorological records for 2006 and 2007 finds an increase of 10% in the frequency of foehn events in 2007 compared to 2006, which corresponds to stronger pressure gradients in the Ross Sea region. It is postulated that the intra- and interannual frequency and intensity of foehn events in the MDVs may therefore vary in response to the position and frequency of cyclones in the Ross Sea region

Microwave emission due to kinetic instabilities in an over-dense mirror-confined plasma

The kinetic instabilities of a microwave plasma confined in an open magnetic trap are relevant to understanding various types of radio emission in space plasma, for example, in the magnetospheres of the Earth and the planets, the Sun, and certain types of stars. The high efficiency of the kinetic wave generation mechanism is due to the low group velocity of plasma waves (in comparison with electromagnetic waves), which ensures they enjoy an extended interaction time with nonequilibrium particles resulting in a high integral gain. Emission from the plasma is observed due to various mechanisms for the transformation of plasma waves into electromagnetic waves, for example, as a result of scattering by thermal ions. In view of the universality of the physical mechanisms of radiation generation, essential aspects of natural systems can be reproduced in laboratory magnetic traps under controlled and reproducible conditions. Hitherto the excitation of plasma waves in open magnetic traps has been carried out with the use of electron beams. The technique reported here exploits a plasma generated by irradiating a mirror confined plasma using mm-waves from a gyrotron under electron-cyclotron resonance conditions, a technique also potentially of interest for technological applications. In such a discharge, a two-component plasma is created with a dense cold (background) fraction with an isotropic particle velocity distribution and a less dense high-energy fraction of nonequilibrium electrons with an anisotropic distribution function. In these experiments, bursts of powerful electromagnetic radiation at a frequency close to the upper hybrid resonance and to the second harmonic of the electron gyrofrequency were observed for the first time, accompanied by synchronous precipitation of fast electrons from the trap. The observed bursts were associated with the instability of plasma waves under conditions of a double plasma resonance, with subsequent transformation of the plasma waves into electromagnetic waves. This poster focuses on a theoretical and experimental study of wave generation in a dense magnetoactive plasma at the harmonics of the electron gyrofrequency. In the experiments at the IAP RAS, a detailed study of the fine structure of dynamic spectra using ultra-wideband oscilloscopes with a bandwidth of up to 59 GHz is reported. Theoretical and numerical analysis at relevant plasma parameters is underway at the University of Strathclyde. Comparison of experimental and theoretical data will lead to an understanding of the mechanisms of electromagnetic radiation generation in magnetic traps and the features of the radio emission spectra observed in natural conditions