Aquinas and the Community of Human Persons

For the sake of simplicity, let us ponder on the community of humans considered as the education and the communication of human persons; an education and a communication that spring forth only from an extraordinary kind of friendship. We shall see that with varying degrees of success, Greeks, Jews and Christians understood this friendship to be primordially an act. Through his study of their three traditions, St. Thomas Aquinas was able to say how this act was realized among us. We should notice first that when we speak of the human community we are always speaking of a community of persons. For St. Thomas, human persons are enfleshed spirits. Being spiritual bodies or bodily spirits by nature, we are always only more or less intellectual and always only more or less free. In fact, being embodied spirits, our intellectuality and our freedom are frighteningly pedestrian

Mapping basin-wide subaquatic slope failure susceptibility as a tool to assess regional seismic and tsunami hazards

This study of subaquatic slope failures in Lake Lucerne, central Switzerland, presents a new concept for evaluating basin-wide slope stability through time as a potential tool for regional seismic and tsunami hazard assessments. Previously acquired high-resolution bathymetry and reflection seismic data, as well as sedimentological and in situ geotechnical data, provide a comprehensive data base to use this lake as a "model basin” to investigate subaquatic landslides and related geohazards. Available data are implemented into a basin-wide slope model. In a Geographic Information System (GIS)-framework, a pseudo-static limit equilibrium infinite slope stability equation is solved for each model point representing reconstructed slope conditions at different times in the past, during which earthquake-triggered landslides occurred. Comparison of reconstructed critical stability conditions with the known distribution of landslide deposits reveals minimum and maximum threshold conditions for slopes that failed or remained stable, respectively. The resulting correlations reveal good agreements and suggest that the slope stability model generally succeeds in reproducing past events. The basin-wide mapping of subaquatic slope failure susceptibility through time thus can also be considered as a promising paleoseismologic tool. Furthermore, it can be used to assess the present-day slope failure susceptibility, allowing for identification of location and estimation of size of future, potentially tsunamigenic subaquatic landslide

Erosional processes, topographic length-scales and geomorphic evolution in arid climatic environments: the ‘Lluta collapse', northern Chile

The ‘Lluta collapse' of northern Chile is one of the oldest recognizable landslides (>2.5Ma) in a hyperarid continental setting. This paper develops a conceptual landscape evolution model of the ‘Lluta collapse' and analyzes the controls of mass wasting and erosion/sediment transport in channels on the topographic development. The data presented here imply that high relief along a topographic scarp, surface fracturing, elevated groundwater table during a more humid climate and an aquitard underlying permeable ignimbrites are preparatory causal factors for landsliding >2.5Ma ago. A strong seismic event then possibly resulted in the displacement of ca. 26km3 of mass. Subsequent modification of the landslide scar occurred by backward erosion, resulting in the establishment of a dendritic drainage network and the removal of an additional ca. 24km3 of material. It appears that this mass was produced by mass wasting in the headwaters, and exported by high-concentrated debris flows in channels. In addition, morphometric information suggest that whereas the geometrical development of the ‘Lluta collapse' has been controlled by gravitational mass wasting, the rates of the development of this geomorphic unit have been limited by the export rates of mass and hence by the transport capacity of the flow

Correspondence between Multilevel Graph Partitions and Tree Decompositions

We present amapping between rooted tree decompositions and node separator basedmultilevel graph partitions. Significant research into both tree decompositions and graph partitions exists. We hope that our result allows for an easier knowledge transfer between the two research avenues

3D modeling of indoor environments by a mobile platform with a laser scanner and panoramic camera

One major challenge of 3DTV is content acquisition. Here, we present a method to acquire a realistic, visually convincing D model of indoor environments based on a mobile platform that is equipped with a laser range scanner and a panoramic camera. The data of the 2D laser scans are used to solve the simultaneous lo- calization and mapping problem and to extract walls. Textures for walls and floor are built from the images of a calibrated panoramic camera. Multiresolution blending is used to hide seams in the gen- erated textures. The scene is further enriched by 3D-geometry cal- culated from a graph cut stereo technique. We present experimental results from a moderately large real environment.