Review of sacred webs: the social lives and networks of Minnan protestants, 1840s–1920s, by Chris White

Accepted manuscrip

Encountering China: the evolution of Timothy Richard's missionary thought (1870-1891)

In pursuit of the conversion of others, cross-cultural missionaries often experience their own “conversions.” This thesis explores the ways in which one particular missionary, the Welshman Timothy Richard (1845–1919), was transformed by his encounter with China. Focusing specifically on the evolution of his understanding and practice of Christian mission during the first half of his career with the Baptist Missionary Society, the study is structured chronologically in order to capture the important ways in which Richard’s experiences shaped his adaptations in mission. Each of Richard’s adaptations is examined within its appropriate historical and cultural context through analysis of his published and unpublished writings—all while paying careful attention to Richard’s identity as a Welsh Baptist missionary. This approach reveals that rather than softening his commitment to conversion in response to his encounters with China, Richard was driven by his persistent evangelical convictions to adapt his missionary methods in pursuit of greater results. When his experiences in Shandong and Shanxi provinces convinced him that Christianity fulfilled China’s own religious past and that God’s Kingdom promised blessings for souls in this life as well as in the next, Richard widened his theological horizons to incorporate these ideas without abandoning his essential understanding of the Christian gospel. As Richard adjusted to the realities of mission in the Chinese context, his growing empathy for Chinese people and their culture increasingly shaped his adaptations, ultimately leading him to advocate methods and emphases on the moral evidences for Christianity that were unacceptable to some of his missionary colleagues and to leaders in other missions, notably James Hudson Taylor. As the first critical work of length to focus on the early half of Richard’s missionary career, this thesis fills a gap in current scholarship on Victorian Protestant missions in China, offering a challenge to the simplistic conservative/liberal dichotomies often used to categorize missionaries. The revised picture of Richard that emerges reveals his original understanding of “the worthy” in Matthew 10, his indebtedness to Chinese sectarian religion, his early application of indigenous principles, his integration of evangelism and famine relief work, his relative unimportance in the China Inland Mission “Shanxi spirit” controversies of the 1880s, and—most significantly—his instrumental rather than evangelistic interest in the scholar-officials of China. By highlighting the priority of the Chinese (religious) context for Richard’s transformation, this thesis also contributes to the growing volume of historiography on Christianity in modern China that emphasizes the multidirectional influences present in the encounters between Christianity and Chinese culture and religion. Finally, connections between Richard’s evolution and changes taking place within the larger missionary community are also explored, situating Richard within wider discussions of accommodationism in mission, the rise of social Christianity, and evangelistic precursors to fulfillment theology.Accepted manuscrip

Evaluating polarization data

A method is presented, which ensures that different polarization observables describing one reaction channel are consistent with each other. Using the connection of the observables to the same underlying reaction amplitudes, a constrained estimate of the observables is carried out using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Initial results indicate that the new estimates are guaranteed to be physical, and will remove the need for artificial fudge factors when these processed data are used in subsequent fits

Phase Errors in Diffraction-Limited Imaging: Contrast Limits for Sparse Aperture Masking

Bispectrum phase, closure phase and their generalisation to kernel-phase are all independent of pupil-plane phase errors to first-order. This property, when used with Sparse Aperture Masking (SAM) behind adaptive optics, has been used recently in high-contrast observations at or inside the formal diffraction limit of large telescopes. Finding the limitations to these techniques requires an understanding of spatial and temporal third-order phase effects, as well as effects such as time-variable dispersion when coupled with the non-zero bandwidths in real observations. In this paper, formulae describing many of these errors are developed, so that a comparison can be made to fundamental noise processes of photon- and background-noise. I show that the current generation of aperture-masking observations of young solar-type stars, taken carefully in excellent observing conditions, are consistent with being limited by temporal phase noise and photon noise. This has relevance for plans to combine pupil-remapping with spatial filtering. Finally, I describe calibration strategies for kernel-phase, including the optimised calibrator weighting as used for LkCa 15, and the restricted kernel-phase POISE technique that avoids explicit dependence on calibrators.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, resubmitted to MNRAS after responding to referee's comment

Improving Photometry and Astrophotography by Eliminating Dark Frames and Flat Fields

I report on the efforts to improve the dark frames and flat fielding procedure for the charged-coupled device (CCD) camera for the Celestron C14 telescope at the UNH observatory. Dark frames are images taken while the shutter of the camera is closed so that only electronic and dark noise and other internal inconsistencies are recorded. These are important because they allow astronomers to subtract out interference from dark current. Additionally, flat fields are images of the entire field of the telescope so that the brightness in the pixels of the telescope’s field of view is uniform. Flat fields are vital since they provide a consistent illumination for all photos taken from the camera. With the combination of these two features, I was able to optimize the clarity of the telescope’s pictures and show through photometry how the new calibrated images appear in comparison to images prior to the calibration. Overall, these enhanced photographs will assist in achieving better results for future astronomy labs at UNH

Sacred webs: the social lives and networks of Minnan Protestants, 1840s-1920s

In Sacred Webs, historian Chris White demonstrates how Chinese Protestants in Minnan, or the southern half of Fujian Province, fractured social ties and constructed and utilized new networks through churches, which served as nodes linking individuals into larger Protestant communities. Through analyzing missionary archives, local church reports, and available Chinese records, Sacred Webs depicts Christianity as a Chinese religion and Minnan Protestants as laying claim to both a Christian faith and a Chinese cultural heritage.Accepted manuscrip

Optimal complementary auctions

This paper considers the situation where two products are sold by the same seller, but to disjoint sets of potential buyers. Externalities may arise from each market outcome to the other. The paper examines the nature of the seller's optimal mechanism, and, for example in the case of positive externalities, it is shown that the allocation decision in either market depends on the highest types in both markets. The optimal mechanism can be implemented by an indirect mechanism that essentially charges winning bidders for the value of their externalities. The analysis is applied to the sale of public sector franchises including exploration and development rights for oil and gas tracts

Using the permanent income hypothesis for forecasting

Forecasting ; Income ; Saving and investment