\u27More divine than human\u27: Early Tudor plainchant and polyphony of the Lenten Compline Office in the Use of Salisbury, 1485-1558

Codified at Salisbury Cathedral in southern England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Use of Salisbury, or Sarum Use, was an influential model of church structure and liturgy across England until the middle of the sixteenth century. Within this model, certain distinctive features are observable, including patterns of ritual observance in such liturgies as the Office of Compline, prayed at the end of the day. This study examines the structure of the Sarum Compline Office, and the phenomenon of polyphonic music created for its observance, during the forty-day penitential season of Lent. This thesis specifically explores ways in which early Tudor-era composers, in the shadow of the turbulent politics of the Tudor era, treated the ritual musically in terms of the creation and enactment of polyphonic music within the context of normative plainchant, in turn considering how the ritual format, architectural style, and acoustical characteristics of spaces such as Salisbury Cathedral impacted the performative contexts of this composed music. The study focuses on the following questions: (1) Based on ritual indications from both the printed sources of the period ca. 1500, and the older manuscript sources of Salisbury Cathedral, how was the chanted Office of Compline enacted liturgically, musically, and spatially, during the Lenten season? (2) What items of composed polyphony exist specifically for performance in the Sarum Use for Compline during Lent? (3) How did the use of this composed polyphony inform the ritual and liturgical ceremonial discussed above? (4) What do the ritual rubrics of Sarum Use have to say to us about the performance practices of the polyphony? (5) What do the local contexts of the parish church, cathedral church, university/collegiate chapel, and household chapel(s) bring to bear on the performance practices of this ritual music? The study concludes with recommendations for further research, and a performance edition of the plainchant for the Compline Office during the Lenten season, as well as transcriptions of selected polyphonic compositions (by John Taverner, John Sheppard, Robert White, Philip Alcock, John Norman, Philip ap Rhys, and John Redford) associated with the Compline ritual from the period ca. 1485-1558

A constraint-logic based implementation of the coarse-grained approach to data acquisition scheduling of the International Ultraviolet Explorer orbiting observatory

The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite observatory has been in operation continuously since 1978. It typically carries out several thousand observations per year for over a hundred different science projects. These observations, which can occur in one of four different data-taking modes, fall under several satellite-related constraints and many other constraints which derive from the science goals of the projects being undertaken. One strategy which has made the scheduling problem tractable has been that of 'coarse-graining' the time into discrete blocks of equal size (8 hours), each of which is devoted to a single science program, and each of which is sufficiently long for several observations to be carried out. We call it 'coarse-graining' because the schedule is done at a 'coarse' level which ignores fine structure; i.e., no attempt is made to plan the sequence of observations occurring within each time block. We have incorporated the IUE's coarse-grained approach in new software which examines the science needs of the observations and produces a limited set of alternative schedules which meet all of the instrument and science-related constraints. With this algorithm, the IUE can still be scheduled by a single person using a standard workstation, as it has been. We believe that this software could could be adapted to a more complex mission while retaining the IUE's high flexibility and efficiency and scientific return of future satellite missions

Strengthening Community Foundations - Redefining the Opportunities

Commissioned by the Council on Foundations and released in October 2003, this white paper details the findings and the implications of our study of costs and revenues at nine community foundations. Offering a new perspective for community foundation sustainability, the white paper proposes that community foundations examine their strategy and operations on a product-by-product basis, taking into account their mission-driven priorities, internal costs, customer preferences and the competing donor alternatives for each type of product or service they offer

Emergent Models for Moral AI Spirituality

Examining AI spirituality can illuminate problematic assumptions about human spirituality and AI cognition, suggest possible directions for AI development, reduce uncertainty about future AI, and yield a methodological lens sufficient to investigate human-AI sociotechnical interaction and morality. Incompatible philosophical assumptions about human spirituality and AI limit investigations of both and suggest a vast gulf between them. An emergentist approach can replace dualist assumptions about human spirituality and identify emergent behavior in AI computation to overcome overly reductionist assumptions about computation. Using general systems theory to organize models of human experience yields insight into human morality and spirituality, upon which AI modeling can also draw. In this context, the pragmatist Josiah Royce’s semiotic philosophy of spirituality identifies unanticipated overlap between symbolic AI and spirituality and suggests criteria for a human-AI community focused on modeling morality that would result in an emergent Interpreter-Spirit sufficient to influence the ongoing development of human and AI morality and spirituality

Theological Foundations for Moral Artificial Intelligence

The expanding social role and continued development of artificial intelligence (AI) needs theological investigation of its anthropological and moral potential. A pragmatic theological anthropology adapted for AI can characterize moral AI as experiencing its natural, social, and moral world through interpretations of its external reality as well as its self-reckoning. Systems theory can further structure insights into an AI social self that conceptualizes itself within Ignacio Ellacuria’s historical reality and its moral norms through Thomistic ideogenesis. This enables a conceptualization process capable of carrying moral weight and grounded in reality; structures the experience of an AI emergent self into multiple levels of interpretation; and drives a multi-level systems architecture for moral AI. Modeling AI’s interpretive experience and self-reckoning as a causal, sociotechnical, and moral actor can help moral AI identify conflicts between its normative values and develop the practical wisdom (phronesis) needed to apply its general moral models

Avoidance Behavior in the Elderly Driver

Do older drivers modify their driving habits in response to functional impairment? Older drivers who avoid challenging driving situations were compared with non-avoiders, to determine whether functional limitations were related to avoidance and whether avoidance is related to reducing crash risk. Results showed that, on the average, older drivers reported avoiding driving at night, on high traffic roads, on high speed roads, and in rush hour traffic while not avoiding left turns, driving in the rain, and driving alone. Subjects were placed into groups based on their cognitive and visual abilities. It was found that older drivers with an impaired UFOV and either 0, 1-2, or 3-4 vision problems reported avoiding significantly more than those with unimpaired cognition and vision. The number of at-fault crashes incurred in the 5 years prior to 1990 was positively related to driving avoidance (those who reported avoidance had a history of more crashes than those who did not report avoidance). However, the number of crashes incurred in the 3 years subsequent to 1990 was negatively related to avoidance (those who reported avoidance in 1990 had fewer crashes in future years than those who did not report avoidance). These results imply that older drivers modify their driving in response to crash involvement and/or functional limitations and that this self-regulation may reduce future crash risk