Out of Time: Ekphrasis, Narration, and Temporal Experience in Twelfth-Century Romances of Antiquity

This article considers the affective and conceptual work demanded in sophisticated moments of ekphrasis that abound in twelfth-century Old French romances, with particular attention to Alexandre de Paris's Roman d'Alexandre (1180s) and to two of the trio of romans d'antiquité, composed in French at the court of Henry II in England: the Roman de Thebes (c. 1150) and Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie (1165). Of concern is the description of mechanical artefacts or tents that are depicted with representations of temporal progression, in the light of Virgil, Aeneid 8, and Homer, Iliad 18, available to twelfth-century Latins via Baebius's abbreviated Latin epitome. Narrative time stops for these ekphrastic moments which describe the pictorial representation of time. Henri Bergson's concept of duration (durée) and Boethius's representation of human and divine time in Consolation of Philosophy, 4 are used to think through the productive tension between time as forward movement, as represented through narration, and time as juxtaposed stasis, by which events all happen simultaneously, as represented through pictorial representation. Beyond that, the cosmic implications of these temporal questions bring out the relationship between twelfth-century literary ekphrasis and the medieval reception of the cosmogony of Plato's Timaeus. Particular attention is paid to the marvellous tents of Adrastus in the Thebes and of Alexander the Great in the Alexandre; to the chariot of Amphiaraus in the Thebes with its depiction of Ovidian myth and Macrobian cosmos; and to the astonishing cosmogrammatical automaton in the Troie's Chamber of Beauties. Ekphrases of artefacts representing time and the world clearly resonated with medieval audiences; rather than being superfluous to the action, they appear as fundamental to the composition and performance of historical narrative in French romance

Spiritual practices and effective Christian leadership

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1883/thumbnail.jp

2D photonic crystals to enhance up-conversion emission for silicon photovoltaics

This thesis investigates the application of 2D photonic crystals to enhance the emission of up-conversion layers to improve the efficiency of silicon photovoltaics. Two up-conversion material compositions are of particular interest in this work: erbium doped titanium dioxide (TiO2:Er) and erbium doped yttrium fluoride (YF3:Er). The 2D photonic crystals under investigation are composed of TiO2:Er and air; and YF3:Er and silicon. These nano-structures are investigated using both simulation and experimental methods. Further work in this thesis analyses the properties of the highly conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) for use as a transparent electrode and thin film electrically conductive adhesive for the application of silicon photovoltaics. The design and geometrical parameters for the 2D photonic crystals were optimised through simulations (plane wave expansion and finite-difference time-domain), before the structures were experimentally fabricated and optically characterised. The novel analysis of the refractive index of the prepared up-conversion materials using ellipsometry was a key step in the design of the photonic crystal structures. A maximum photoluminescence enhancement of 3.79 times was observed for the 980 nm emission profile, however this could not be successfully attributed to a photonic crystal effect. The optical, mechanical and electronic properties of PEDOT:PSS were characterised for thin film samples, using novel ellipsometry analysis

Five Principles for Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy

There seems to be consensus that the Department of Justice’s 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines do not reflect either modern theoretical and empirical economic analysis or current agency enforcement policy. Yet widely divergent views of preferred enforcement policies have been expressed among agency enforcers and commentators. Based on our review of the relevant economic literature and our experience analyzing vertical mergers, we recommend that the enforcement agencies adopt five principles: (i) The agencies should consider and investigate the full range of potential anticompetitive harms when evaluating vertical mergers; (ii) The agencies should decline to presume that vertical mergers benefit competition on balance in the oligopoly markets that typically prompt agency review, nor set a higher evidentiary standard based on such a presumption; (iii) The agencies should evaluate claimed efficiencies resulting from vertical mergers as carefully and critically as they evaluate claimed efficiencies resulting from horizontal mergers, and require the merging parties to show that the efficiencies are verifiable, merger-specific and sufficient to reverse the potential anticompetitive effects; (iv) The agencies should decline to adopt a safe harbor for vertical mergers, even if rebuttable, except perhaps when both firms compete in unconcentrated markets; (v) The agencies should consider adopting rebuttable anticompetitive presumptions that a vertical merger harms competition when certain factual predicates are satisfied. We do not intend these presumptions to describe all the ways by which vertical mergers can harm competition, so the agencies should continue to investigate vertical mergers that raise concerns about input and customer foreclosure, loss of a disruptive or maverick firm, evasion of rate regulation or other threats to competition, even if the specific factual predicates of the presumptions are not satisfied

Unlocking Antitrust Enforcement

There is no antitrust law without antitrust law enforcement. Legal action turns economic and jurisprudential theory into litigation, remedy, prohibition, deterrence, and precedent that advance competition. This Collection, Unlocking Antitrust Enforcement, demonstrates that tools to advance antitrust enforcement already exist, and they are well-suited to confront today\u27s U.S. antitrust challenges. The Features arrive at a critical moment, when economic forces mirror the industrial concentration and economic inequality of the turn of the twentieth century. Recall that the impetus for the creation of U.S. antitrust laws was the growing power of Industrial Age trusts, combinations of holdings within and across industries that dominated important economic sectors like oil, steel, and tobacco

Delineating Turkic non-finite verb forms by syntactic function

In this paper, we argue against the primary categories of non-finite verb used in the Turkology literature: “participle” (причастие ‹pričastije›) and “converb” (деепричастие ‹dejepričastije›). We argue that both of these terms conflate several discrete phenomena, and that they furthermore are not coherent as umbrella terms for these phenomena. Based on detailed study of the non-finite verb morphology and syntax of a wide range of Turkic languages (presented here are Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Tuvan, and Sakha), we instead propose delineation of these categories according to their morphological and syntactic properties. Specifically, we propose that more accurate categories are verbal noun, verbal adjective, verbal adverb, and infinitive. This approach has far-reaching implications to the study of syntactic phenomena in Turkic languages, including phenomena ranging from relative clauses to clause chaining

Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics

Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics contains 10 lessons that reintroduce an ethical dimension to economics in the tradition of Adam Smith, who believed ethical considerations were central to life. Utilizing these innovative instructional materials your students will learn about the important role ethics and character play in a market economy and how, in turn, markets influence ethical behavior. The lessons do more than illustrate how ethical conduct improves an economy. They actively involve the students through simulations, group decision making, problem solving, classroom demonstrations and role playing. The lessons encourage students to think critically about ethical dilemmas.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1072/thumbnail.jp

The Radius Distribution of Planets Around Cool Stars

We calculate an empirical, non-parametric estimate of the shape of the period-marginalized radius distribution of planets with periods less than 150 days using the small yet well-characterized sample of cool ($T_{\rm eff} <4000$K) dwarf stars in the Kepler catalog. In particular, we present and validate a new procedure, based on weighted kernel density estimation, to reconstruct the shape of the planet radius function down to radii smaller than the completeness limit of the survey at the longest periods. Under the assumption that the period distribution of planets does not change dramatically with planet radius, we show that the occurrence of planets around these stars continues to increase to below 1 $R_\oplus$, and that there is no strong evidence for a turnover in the planet radius function. In fact, we demonstrate using many iterations of simulated data that a spurious turnover may be inferred from data even when the true distribution continues to rise toward smaller radii. Finally, the sharp rise in the radius distribution below $\sim$3 $R_\oplus$ implies that a large number of planets await discovery around cool dwarfs as the sensitivities of ground-based transit surveys increase.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, published in Ap

Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics

Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics contains 10 lessons that reintroduce an ethical dimension to economics in the tradition of Adam Smith, who believed ethical considerations were central to life. Utilizing these innovative instructional materials your students will learn about the important role ethics and character play in a market economy and how, in turn, markets influence ethical behavior. The lessons do more than illustrate how ethical conduct improves an economy. They actively involve the students through simulations, group decision making, problem solving, classroom demonstrations and role playing. The lessons encourage students to think critically about ethical dilemmas.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1072/thumbnail.jp

Antitrust Enforcement Against Platform MFNs

Antitrust enforcement against anticompetitive platform most favored nations (MFN) provisions (also termed pricing parity provisions) can help protect competition in online markets. An online platform imposes a platform MFN when it requires that providers using its platform not offer their products or services at a lower price on other platforms. These contractual provisions may be employed by a variety of online platforms offering, for example, hotel and transportation bookings, consumer goods, digital goods, or handmade craft products. They have been the subject of antitrust enforcement in Europe but have drawn only limited antitrust scrutiny in the United States. Our Feature explains why MFNs employed by online platforms can harm com­ petition by keeping prices high and discouraging the entry of new platform rivals, through both exclusionary and collusive mechanisms, notwithstanding the possibility that some MFNs may facilitate investment by limiting customer freeriding. We discuss ways by which government enforcers in the United States and private plaintiffs could potentially reach anticompetitive platform MFNs under the Sherman Act, and the litigation challenges such cases present