The Superfluity of Purgatory

This article is a refutation of Jerry Walls\u27s model of Purgatory, based on God\u27s respect of our free will and the necessity of morally significant choices. Additionally, it will show how Walls\u27s positing of a temporal Purgatory as a means of sanctification through cooperation with God is unnecessary for the Christian in light of our earthly life and God\u27s perfect justice and omnipotence. Finally, it will speculate as to the effects of an instantaneous purification and how it fits more clearly with traditional doctrine

Government policy towards multi-national corporations

We analyze an environment with asymmetric information where a country tries to attract a multi-national corporation. The country can use both taxes and grants to meet its objective of maximizing net revenues. We show that when the country has private information it can often convey it via its choice of a tax-grant pair. When the tax rates are unbounded the country is able to extract the full surplus. The existence of an upper bound can in some cases reduce the payoff to a stronger country.Foreign Direct Investment

Interpreting network formalisms

AbstractIn a recent paper, Reiter and Criscuolo [3] remark “that (semantic) networks are notational variants of logical formulae is by now a truism in Artificial Intelligence circles”. Shamelessly exploiting the foregoing quote as a pretext, I attempt to sketch adequate semantic accounts for at least two (kinds of) semantic network formalisms; one, based on the notion of inheritance, one, not. A crucial condition of adequacy to be satisfied is fidelity to some of the intuitions of the creators of the formalisms

Effects of translocation and deer-vehicle collision mitigation on Florida Key deer

Urban development and habitat fragmentation threaten recovery and management of the endangered Florida Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium). Urban development has reduced deer dispersal from their core habitat resulting in deer “overabundance” and has increased deer-human interactions (mostly deer-vehicle collisions [DVCs]). Conversely, deer populations on outer islands have declined in recent years due to limited deer dispersal from source populations. In order to expand the Key deer’s range and reduce DVCs within their core habitat, wildlife managers determined translocations and DVC mitigation were needed. Thus, the objectives of my thesis were to determine (1) effects of translocation on the establishment of outer-island local populations, and (2) effects of United States 1 Highway (US 1) improvements (i.e., exclusion fencing, underpasses, deer guards, and extra lane creation) on DVCs and deer movements. I evaluated the efficacy of translocations by comparing annual survival and seasonal ranges between resident and translocated deer and by analyzing reproduction of translocated deer. Translocated females (yearlings and adults) had lower annual survival than resident deer. Conversely, males (yearlings and adults) demonstrated higher annual survival than resident males. Due to low sample sizes and large variation, these numbers are potentially less important than the high overall survival (only 4 of 38 died). Seasonal ranges were generally smaller for resident deer than translocated deer. I attribute differences in ranges to differences in habitat quality between the core habitat and destination islands and to use of soft releases. Presence of fawns and yearlings indicated successful reproduction of translocated deer. Overall, the project was successful in establishing populations on the destination islands. The US 1 Highway improvements reduced DVCs along the fenced section of US 1 (2003, n = 2; 2004, n = 1; 2005, n = 0); however, overall DVCs increased on Big Pine Key (1996–2000, x¯ = 79; 2003, n = 91; 2004, n = 84; 2005, n = 100). Data suggest DVCs shifted to the unfenced segment of US 1. However, monthly deer surveys also suggested an increase in deer numbers that may explain overall DVC increases observed in my study

Model-Based Environmental Visual Perception for Humanoid Robots

The visual perception of a robot should answer two fundamental questions: What? and Where? In order to properly and efficiently reply to these questions, it is essential to establish a bidirectional coupling between the external stimuli and the internal representations. This coupling links the physical world with the inner abstraction models by sensor transformation, recognition, matching and optimization algorithms. The objective of this PhD is to establish this sensor-model coupling

Laser Communications Relay Demonstration: Introduction for Experimenters

This document provides guidance to individuals or groups considering proposing an experiment for the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) Experiment Program. For the purposes of this document, the term experiment refers to both experiments and demonstrations. The documents goals are: (1) to introduce potential experimenters to the LCRD mission, its purpose, and its system architecture; (2) to help them understand the types of experiments that are possible using LCRD; and (3) to provide an overview of the experiment proposal process and explain how and where to obtain further information about making a proposal