Book Review: The Bible Trembled: The Hindu-Christian Controversies of Nineteenth Century Ceylon

A review of The Bible Trembled: The Hindu-Christian Controversies of Nineteenth Century Ceylon by F. R. Young and S. Jebunesan

I Said We’d Never Have A Union, 1980

Newpaper article about Richardson Brothers Co. Sheboygan Falls, Wisc., advocating for an open shop, December 18, 1979

3.8-Micron Photometry During the Secondary Eclipse of the Extrasolar Planet HD 209458b

We report infrared photometry of the extrasolar planet HD 209458b during the time of secondary eclipse (planet passing behind the star). Observations were acquired during two secondary eclipses at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in September 2003. We used a circular variable filter (1.5-percent bandpass) centered at 3.8 microns to isolate the predicted flux peak of the planet at this wavelength. Residual telluric absorption and instrument variations were removed by offsetting the telescope to nearby bright comparison stars at a high temporal cadence. Our results give a secondary eclipse depth of 0.0013 +/- 0.0011, not yet sufficient precision to detect the eclipse, whose expected depth is approximately 0.002 - 0.003. We here elucidate the current observational limitations to this technique, and discuss the approach needed to achieve detections of hot Jupiter secondary eclipses at 3.8 microns from the ground.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, in press for MNRA

Plain Folk Recovered: Class, Property And Agriculture In Lawrence County, Alabama, 1850-1860

This thesis examines the population and economy of farmers in Lawrence County, a county in northern Alabama, in the decade between 1850 and 1860. It uses the manuscript schedules of the United States census and statistical analysis aided by a computer database to determine landownership and bring a focus to the class of landowning yeoman farmers on the border between two physiographic regions: the Tennessee Valley, where land and resources were largely dominated by large planters, and the hill country in the south of the county, where yeomen enjoyed access to open land and opportunity for economic advancement. It shows that landownership, as the defining characteristic of yeomen, made a substantial difference in the fortunes of yeoman farmers vis-à-vis tenants who had access to land but did not own it. It reconsiders the arguments of Frank Owsley, the pioneering southern historian who first brought attention to yeoman farmers in the 1940s, in the context of subsequent historiography. Contrary to Owsley\u27s thesis, it argues yeomen were neither prosperous nor upwardly mobile, but were stagnating economically. They were losing ground in the share of resources they held in the economy to the expansion of planters, as property in both land and slaves became increasingly concentrated among the wealthy elites. Yeomen in particular were becoming decreasingly involved in the institution of slavery as the nation neared the Civil War

Scale-dependent fracture in gradient elastic materials

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and Nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) have a wide range of applications in aerospace, power industry, automation & robotics, chemical & medical treatment analysis, information technology and in the infrastructure health monitoring equipments. To ensure the reliability of such small devices, the mechanical and hence fracture behaviour of their common building blocks such as beams, tubes, and plates should be carefully evaluated. However, on a smaller scale, the microstructural effects such as size effects, load-induced and geometrically prompted stress singularities are more noticeable, particularly at the micro/nano scale. Classical continuum elasticity theories are inadequate to accurately describe the situations controlled by the microstructure effects since the influence of these effects are not properly accounted for. On the other hand, the higher order gradient theories such as strain gradient theory may effectively describe the effects of microstructure through the solution of properly formulated boundary value problems. Moreover, when dealing with piezoelectric micro/nano materials, due to the presence of massive strain gradient, the electric field-strain gradient coupling (flexoelectricity) should also be considered. The objective of this research is to evaluate the scale-dependent fracture behaviour of gradient elastic materials using strain gradient theory. In particular, two most widely studied geometrical configurations i.e. double cantilever beam (DCB) and centrally cracked material layer are employed in this work. The findings presented in this thesis are expected to give useful insights to those working in the structural integrity analysis at the micro/nano scale. They are anticipated to help in the design of micro/nano structural components and serve as a benchmark for future theoretical and empirical studies

Assessing Security Flaws in Modern Precision Farming Systems

The increasing interconnectivity of the digital age brings new vulnerabilities for cyber criminals and nation state threat actors alike. Every day, threat actors make millions of at-tacks against a variety of systems. Though not all these attacks prove successful, they all share the same goal of manipulating or extracting data from their targets. The dawn of digitalization in the agricultural industry finds itself under the same threats. Because agriculture sits within the category of critical infrastructure, digitizing this industry should be accompanied with special concern for implementing good security practices. At a basic level, good cyber security practice includes ensuring that data remains confidential to users and processes, ensuring that data remains unmodified by unauthorized methods, and ensuring the accessibility of the data. However, no system can be made completely secure. Some form of exploitation will always exist by which proprietary data of the customer, or the manufacturer, can be leaked or abused. Thus, this paper does not ask if vulnerabilities exist on on-board precision farming equipment, but rather it asks what level of risk these exploits possess. In other words, if a vulnerability becomes exploited, what access or data does the attacker gain and does its value equal the amount of effort required to obtain it? The likely answer exposes vulnerabilities that damage the finances or reputations of individual producers and manufactures, which may provide an equal level of danger to the industry if these attacks can be scaled up against multiple targets.https://scholar.dsu.edu/research-symposium/1032/thumbnail.jp

Free cash flow, agency costs, and the affordability method of advertising budgeting

This is the published version. Copyright 2002 by the American Marketing Association.The allocation of excess cash has long been recognized in the finance literature as an important aspect of the basic agency conflict between managers and owners. In the advertising budgeting context, marketing scholars report that firms possessing high levels of cash tend to spend more on advertising than what seems necessary or desirable. Indeed, this positive link between excess cash and advertising expenditures constitutes a part of what is commonly referred to as the affordability method of advertising budgeting. Surprisingly, there has been little research that attempts to view this association as a manifestation of agency costs. Therefore, this article examines whether agency costs, as measured by managerial ownership, moderate the relationship between excess cash and advertising expenditures. On the basis of received theory, the authors conceptualize that agency costs will first decrease, then increase, and then decrease again with the level of managerial ownership

Constructing the Heroic Whistleblower: A Social Scientific Approach

Many whistleblowers perform heroic acts, but not all whistleblowers are heroes. Motivation, method, and risk vary across whistleblower contexts. Although many whistleblowers portray aspects of archetypal heroism, research is needed to specify the qualities of heroic whistleblowers from non-heroic whistleblowers. The present study aims to develop an archetype of heroic whistleblowers. We identify five dimensions of whistleblowing heroism and then draw upon data from interviews that we conducted with 32 actual whistleblowers to provide examples of each element. We argue there are five dimensions of the whistleblowing process that distinguish heroic whistleblowers. The five dimensions include 1) motivation for blowing the whistle (altruistic vs. selfish), 2) complicity in the wrongdoing (bystander vs. complicit), 3) level of risk for exposing the wrongdoing (high risk vs. low risk), 4) whistleblower effect (efforts led to positive change vs. efforts produced little or no change), and 5) whistleblower willingness (they would blow the whistle again vs. they would not blow the whistle again). We argue whistleblowers exemplify heroism when they expose wrongdoing for altruistic reasons, are not complicit in the unethical behavior, they assume a high level of risk to their safety, reputation, or career, when their efforts lead to constructive changes, and when the whistleblower remains vigilant in their willingness to combat wrongdoing. We conclude by offering propositions, limitations, and future research possibilities