Catholic missions in the Solomon Islands, 1845-1966

This study seeks to trace, account for and evaluate the development of Catholic (in the sense of Roman Catholic) missionary activity in the Solomon Islands. In more general terms, it attempts to examine the efforts made to establish a European institution in a changing but resilient Melanesian cultural environment. The subject is, therefore, considered in the broad context of culture contact, for Catholicism was not planted in the Solomon Islands as an isolated or merely religious phenomenon. It came as part of a broad range of European influences which, by the end of the nineteenth century, had begun to make a significant impact on the lives of the islanders. Moreover, although the missionaries' efforts necessarily reflect their own assumptions regarding their task, these were also shaped, and their effectiveness largely determined, by the environment in which they occurred. Focussing on the interaction of forces of indigenous and of exotic origin, the study readily falls into three parts, which correspond to three phases in the recent development of the Solomon Islands - early contact, colonial, and post-colonia1. In the first period, 1845-55» the missionaries were confronted with a society in which traditional values and procedures were still virtually intact and in which Christianity was unable to gain a foothold. In the second period, 1898-1942, on the contrary, as a result of increased contact, the situation had changed markedly, and the missionaries succeeded in winning a large following in nearly every part of the group. Even so, their work was far from complete. In the third period, 1946-66, the years since the Second World War, with the future of European domination becoming less secure they have been forced to pursue new goals - to offer more advanced social services than in the past and to make serious efforts to ensure the vital coincidence of self-rule in Church and State

Watriama and Co: Further Pacific Islands Portraits

Watriama and Co (the title echoes Kipling’s Stalky and Co!) is a collection of biographical essays about people associated with the Pacific Islands. It covers

The Rule of Law in the Athenian Demokratia: Origins, History, and Oratory

According to Aristotle, demokratia is an invalid form of constitution unless it operates in conjunction with the rule of law. Historically, the idea of the rule of law was connected with wealthy elites in Athens. However, after a series of upheavals between the Athenian mass and elites, the demos accepted the rule of law as a valid check on demotic power. Rule of law required legal codification, which outlined a framework within which democratic law functioned. The Athenian law court became the arena for enforcing the law, thereby ridding the city of negative socio/political influences. Hybris, political corruption, and general questions of legality all came under the power of the democratic courts of law, which exerted the legitimate power of the combined community. Nevertheless, tradition maintained a strong influence on law, especially in the law courts. Bound up in legal arguments were ideas of Athenian identity and it became accepted that the juries would assess the character of the accused against the character of the Athenian demos in the course of making its decision. Athenian elites who previously continued feuds extra-legally submitted to the law courts, which offered an arena for dispute resolution. Ultimately, the rule of law in the Athenian demokratia upheld Athenian law, created a legal framework, and allowed personal and political disputes to be settled before they dissolved into stasis, offering the Athenian demokratia its most successful mechanism for creating social, political, and legal, stability

A Software Defined Radio Interrogator for Passive Harmonic Transponders

Passive wireless sensors provide an opportunity for long term monitoring of remote environments. Since these devices are not battery powered, they can be deployed for an indefinite amount of time. Such devices are energized by an interrogation signal that enables them to transmit information via a return signal. Some systems (e.g., RFID) utilize the same frequency for interrogation and the return, which causes unwanted interference, particularly in cluttered environments. This work considers an interrogation system for a different class of passive devices, i.e., passive harmonic transponders. Specifically, results are presented for a single-board software defined radio (SDR) interrogation system which transmits an interrogation signal at 1.3 GHz and receives a return at 2.6 GHz. The system is demonstrated with a passive, chip-less device known as a frequency doubling reflectenna (FDR). The SDR platform enables a compact, low-cost, and quickly operating design. The mean absolute error of the proposed interrogator was found to be 1.15 dB when compared with laboratory-grade instrumentation. Additionally, this system is capable of interrogating up to a distance of 70 cm with an EIRP of only 0 dBm. This thesis presents an SDR system made with the open-source software package, GNURadio, capable of interrogating harmonic transponders with a single, full-duplex board. All signal processing is conducted on a laptop computer, eliminating the need for expensive laboratory instrumentation. The size of the system interrogator was also minimized, reducing the form factor of the whole interrogator to be only 25 $\times$ 15 cm. Furthermore, a new harmonic transponder was designed using transmission line matching methods, eliminating the need for discrete matching components. This harmonic transponder has a conversion loss of 31.04 dB at an input power of -28.21 dBm as demonstrated with the SDR interrogator

The Iteration Domain Reference Governor, a Constraint Management Scheme for Batch Processes

In this work, a novel combination of Reference Governors (RG) and Iterative Learning Control (ILC) to address the issue of simultaneous learning and constraint management in systems that perform a task repeatedly is proposed. The proposed control strategy leverages the measured output from the previous iterations to improve tracking, while guaranteeing constraint satisfaction during the learning process. To achieve this, the plant is modeled by a linear system with uncertainties. An RG solution based on a robust Maximal Admissible Set (MAS) is proposed that endows the ILC algorithm with constraint management capabilities. The proposed method is applied to the Scalar Reference Governor (SRG), the Vector Reference Governor (VRG) and the Command Governor (CG). An update law on the MAS is proposed to further improve performance

Systems thinking for safety and security

The fundamental challenge facing security professionals is preventing losses, be they operational, financial or mission losses. As a result, one could argue that security professionals share this challenge with safety professionals. Despite their shared challenge, there is little evidence that recent advances that enable one community to better prevent losses have been shared with the other for possible implementation. Limitations in current safety approaches have led researchers and practitioners to develop new models and techniques. These techniques could potentially benefit the field of security. This paper describes a new systems thinking approach to safety that may be suitable for meeting the challenge of securing complex systems against cyber disruptions. Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis for Security (STPA-Sec) augments traditional security approaches by introducing a top-down analysis process designed to help a multidisciplinary team consisting of security, operations, and domain experts identify and constrain the system from entering vulnerable states that lead to losses. This new framework shifts the focus of the security analysis away from threats as the proximate cause of losses and focuses instead on the broader system structure that allowed the system to enter a vulnerable system state that the threat exploits to produce the disruption leading to the loss

systems-theoretic security model for large scale, complex systems applied to the US air transportation system

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-132).Classical risk-based or game-theoretic security models rely on assumptions from reliability theory and rational expectations economics that are not applicable to security threats. Additionally, these models suffer from serious deficiencies when they are applied to software-intensive, socio-technical systems. Recent work by Leveson in the area of system safety engineering has led to the development of a new accident model for system safety that acknowledges the dynamic complexity of accidents. Systems-Theoretic Accident Models and Processes (STAMP) applies principles from control theory to enforce constraints on hazards and thereby prevent accidents. Appreciating the similarities between safety and security while still acknowledging the differences, this thesis extends STAMP to security problems. In particular, it is applied to identify and mitigate the threats that could emerge in critical infrastructures such as the Air Transportation System. Furthermore, recommendations are provided to assist systems engineers and policy makers in securely transitioning to the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS).by Joseph R. Laracy.S.M

Development of a quantitative method for the analysis of cocaine analogue impregnated into textiles by Raman spectroscopy

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Cocaine trafficking in the form of textile impregnation is routinely encountered as a concealment method. Raman spectroscopy has been a popular and successful testing method used for in situ screening of cocaine in textiles and other matrices. Quantitative analysis of cocaine in these matrices using Raman spectroscopy has not been reported to date. This study aimed to develop a simple Raman method for quantifying cocaine using atropine as the model analogue in various types of textiles. Textiles were impregnated with solutions of atropine in methanol. The impregnated atropine was extracted using less hazardous acidified water with the addition of potassium thiocyanate (KSCN) as an internal standard for Raman analysis. Despite the presence of background matrix signals arising from the textiles, the cocaine analogue could easily be identified by its characteristic Raman bands. The successful use of KSCN normalised the analyte signal response due to different textile matrix background interferences and thus removed the need for a matrix-matched calibration. The method was linear over a concentration range of 6.25–37.5 mg/cm2 with a coefficient of determination (R2) at 0.975 and acceptable precision and accuracy. A simple and accurate Raman spectroscopy method for the analysis and quantification of a cocaine analogue impregnated in textiles has been developed and validated for the first time. This proof-of-concept study has demonstrated that atropine can act as an ideal model compound to study the problem of cocaine impregnation in textile. The method has the potential to be further developed and implemented in real world forensic cases

SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody responses are more robust in patients with severe disease.

We studied plasma antibody responses of 35 patients about 1 month after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Titers of antibodies binding to the viral nucleocapsid and spike proteins were significantly higher in patients with severe disease. Likewise, mean antibody neutralization titers against SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus and live virus were higher in the sicker patients, by ∼5-fold and ∼7-fold, respectively. These findings have important implications for those pursuing plasma therapy, isolation of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, and determinants of immunity