Will there ever be peace in the Middle East?

Martin Indyk, Vice President and Director for Foreign Policy at The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. [Following title] Martin Indyk served as the United Nations Ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs during the Clinton Administration.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/bennettcenter-posters/1277/thumbnail.jp

The politics of patronage : Israel and Egypt between the superpowers 1962-1973

This thesis is a study of the interaction between two weak states and their superpower patrons through the application of a theoretical analysis of the 'power of the weak' to the study of the political and military conduct of relations between Israel, Egypt, the United States and the Soviet Union in the period from 1962 to 1973. The thesis establishes some of the conditions under which lesser powers, engaged in a protracted conflict and dependent upon the military, economic and political support of the superpowers, could nevertheless resist and thereby influence the policies of their patrons. ii In the Arab-Israeli context, the thesis examines the effect that the politics of patronage have had on the conduct and settlement of the conflict and analyses the successes and failures of Israeli and Egyptian diplomacy in securing the support of their superpower patrons while resisting the imposition of an order inimical to their own interests

Space-optimal Heavy Hitters with Strong Error Bounds

The problem of finding heavy hitters and approximating the frequencies of items is at the heart of many problems in data stream analysis. It has been observed that several proposed solutions to this problem can outperform their worst-case guarantees on real data. This leads to the question of whether some stronger bounds can be guaranteed. We answer this in the positive by showing that a class of "counter-based algorithms" (including the popular and very space-efficient FREQUENT and SPACESAVING algorithms) provide much stronger approximation guarantees than previously known. Specifically, we show that errors in the approximation of individual elements do not depend on the frequencies of the most frequent elements, but only on the frequency of the remaining "tail." This shows that counter-based methods are the most space-efficient (in fact, space-optimal) algorithms having this strong error bound. This tail guarantee allows these algorithms to solve the "sparse recovery" problem. Here, the goal is to recover a faithful representation of the vector of frequencies, f. We prove that using space O(k), the algorithms construct an approximation f* to the frequency vector f so that the L1 error ||f -- f*||[subscript 1] is close to the best possible error min[subscript f2] ||f2 -- f||[subscript 1], where f2 ranges over all vectors with at most k non-zero entries. This improves the previously best known space bound of about O(k log n) for streams without element deletions (where n is the size of the domain from which stream elements are drawn). Other consequences of the tail guarantees are results for skewed (Zipfian) data, and guarantees for accuracy of merging multiple summarized streams.David & Lucile Packard Foundation (Fellowship)Center for Massive Data Algorithmics (MADALGO)National Science Foundation (U.S.). (Grant number CCF-0728645

Mineralogy of a Mudstone at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars

Sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay (Gale Crater) on Mars include mudstone sampled by the Curiosity rover. The samples, John Klein and Cumberland, contain detrital basaltic minerals, Ca-sulfates, Fe oxide/hydroxides, Fe-sulfides, amorphous material, and trioctahedral smectites. The John Klein smectite has basal spacing of ~10 Å indicating little interlayer hydration. The Cumberland smectite has basal spacing at ~13.2 Å as well as ~10 Å. The ~13.2 Å spacing suggests a partially chloritized interlayer or interlayer Mg or Ca facilitating H_2O retention. Basaltic minerals in the mudstone are similar to those in nearby eolian deposits. However, the mudstone has far less Fe-forsterite, possibly lost with formation of smectite plus magnetite. Late Noachian/Early Hesperian or younger age indicates that clay mineral formation on Mars extended beyond Noachian time

Volatile and Organic Compositions of Sedimentary Rocks in Yellowknife Bay, Gale crater, Mars

H₂O, CO₂, SO₂, O₂, H₂, H₂S, HCl, chlorinated hydrocarbons, NO and other trace gases were evolved during pyrolysis of two mudstone samples acquired by the Curiosity rover at Yellowknife Bay within Gale crater, Mars. H₂O/OH-bearing phases included 2:1 phyllosilicate(s), bassanite, akaganeite, and amorphous materials. Thermal decomposition of carbonates and combustion of organic materials are candidate sources for the CO₂. Concurrent evolution of O₂ and chlorinated hydrocarbons suggest the presence of oxychlorine phase(s). Sulfides are likely sources for S-bearing species. Higher abundances of chlorinated hydrocarbons in the mudstone compared with Rocknest windblown materials previously analyzed by Curiosity suggest that indigenous martian or meteoritic organic C sources may be preserved in the mudstone; however, the C source for the chlorinated hydrocarbons is not definitively of martian origin

A Habitable Fluvio-Lacustrine Environment at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars

The Curiosity rover discovered fine-grained sedimentary rocks, inferred to represent an ancient lake, preserve evidence of an environment that would have been suited to support a Martian biosphere founded on chemolithoautotrophy. This aqueous environment was characterized by neutral pH, low salinity, and variable redox states of both iron and sulfur species. C, H, O, S, N, and P were measured directly as key biogenic elements, and by inference N and P are assumed to have been available. The environment likely had a minimum duration of hundreds to tens of thousands of years. These results highlight the biological viability of fluvial-lacustrine environments in the post-Noachian history of Mars

Elemental Geochemistry of Sedimentary Rocks at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars

Sedimentary rocks examined by the Curiosity rover at Yellowknife Bay, Mars, were derived from sources that evolved from approximately average Martian crustal composition to one influenced by alkaline basalts. No evidence of chemical weathering is preserved indicating arid, possibly cold, paleoclimates and rapid erosion/deposition. Absence of predicted geochemical variations indicates that magnetite and phyllosilicates formed by diagenesis under low temperature, circum-neutral pH, rock-dominated aqueous conditions. High spatial resolution analyses of diagenetic features, including concretions, raised ridges and fractures, indicate they are composed of iron- and halogen-rich components, magnesium-iron-chlorine-rich components and hydrated calcium-sulfates, respectively. Composition of a cross-cutting dike-like feature is consistent with sedimentary intrusion. Geochemistry of these sedimentary rocks provides further evidence for diverse depositional and diagenetic sedimentary environments during the early history of Mars

The Petrochemistry of Jake_M: A Martian Mugearite

“Jake_M,” the first rock analyzed by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer instrument on the Curiosity rover, differs substantially in chemical composition from other known martian igneous rocks: It is alkaline (>15% normative nepheline) and relatively fractionated. Jake_M is compositionally similar to terrestrial mugearites, a rock type typically found at ocean islands and continental rifts. By analogy with these comparable terrestrial rocks, Jake_M could have been produced by extensive fractional crystallization of a primary alkaline or transitional magma at elevated pressure, with or without elevated water contents. The discovery of Jake_M suggests that alkaline magmas may be more abundant on Mars than on Earth and that Curiosity could encounter even more fractionated alkaline rocks (for example, phonolites and trachytes)

X-ray Diffraction Results from Mars Science Laboratory: Mineralogy of Rocknest at Gale Crater

The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity scooped samples of soil from the Rocknest aeolian bedform in Gale crater. Analysis of the soil with the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) x-ray diffraction (XRD) instrument revealed plagioclase (~An57), forsteritic olivine (~Fo62), augite, and pigeonite, with minor K-feldspar, magnetite, quartz, anhydrite, hematite, and ilmenite. The minor phases are present at, or near, detection limits. The soil also contains 27 ± 14 weight percent x-ray amorphous material, likely containing multiple Fe^(3+)- and volatile-bearing phases, including possibly a substance resembling hisingerite. The crystalline component is similar to the normative mineralogy of certain basaltic rocks from Gusev crater on Mars and of martian basaltic meteorites. The amorphous component is similar to that found on Earth in places such as soils on the Mauna Kea volcano, Hawaii