3,906 research outputs found
The Presbyterian Enlightenment: The confluence of evangelical and enlightenment thought in British America
Eighteenth-Century British American Presbyterian ministers incorporated covenantal theology, ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment, and resistance theory in their sermons. The sermons of Presbyterian ministers strongly indicate the intermixing of enlightenment and evangelical ideas. Congregants heard and read these sermons, spreading these ideas to the average colonist. This combination helps explain why American Presbyterians were so apt to resist British rule during the American Revolution. Protestant covenantal theology, derived from Protestant reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, emphasized virtue and duty. This covenant affected both the people and their rulers. When rulers failed to uphold their covenant with God, the people no longer had to obey that ruler. Covenantal theology migrated to the American colonies through Scottish and Irish immigrants. These ideas spread rapidly during the First Great Awakening, especially through important ministers like Gilbert Tennent. Tennent established an academy in Neshaminy to provide an education for future ministers, which his students emulated. The Scottish Enlightenment arose during the eighteenth-century but was often unpopular among Scottish Presbyterians, but American Presbyterians were more willing to adopt these ideas. Presbyterian ministers often espoused Hutcheson’s moral sense and Reid’s common sense. When John Witherspoon reached America, it was already in the process of adopting the Scottish Enlightenment, providing him the opportunity to incorporate it into the curriculum of the College of New Jersey as its President. Ideas generated in British Enlightenment combined with older covenantal theology to create an American resistance theology. Presbyterian ministers incorporated enlightenment virtue, the Vindiciae,and John Locke into their sermons to promote resistance to tyranny. This was a common refrain for ministers during the wars with France and often these sermons reached American militias who participated in that war. When British Parliament and King George III asserted their power over the British American colonies during the 1760s, American Presbyterians believed this violated the British Constitution, which they professed was a covenant. Since it was violated, Americans found justification to rebel against British rule. Many Presbyterians with connections to earlier ministers preaching covenantal theology and Enlightenment ideas played a key role during the Revolution
Capacitive pressure transducer system
Closed loop capacitive pressure transducer with extended frequency response for very low pressure measurement
Next-Generation Dengue Vaccines: Novel Strategies Currently Under Development
Dengue has become the most important arboviral infection worldwide with more than 30 million cases of dengue fever estimated to occur each year. The need for a dengue vaccine is great and several live attenuated dengue candidate vaccines are proceeding through clinical evaluation. The need to induce a balanced immune response against all four DENV serotypes with a single vaccine has been a challenge for dengue vaccine developers. A live attenuated DENV chimeric vaccine produced by Sanofi Pasteur has recently entered Phase III evaluation in numerous dengue-endemic regions of the world. Viral interference between serotypes contained in live vaccines has required up to three doses of the vaccine be given over a 12-month period of time. For this reason, novel DENV candidate vaccines are being developed with the goal of achieving a protective immune response with an immunization schedule that can be given over the course of a few months. These next-generation candidates include DNA vaccines, recombinant adenovirus vectored vaccines, alphavirus replicons, and sub-unit protein vaccines. Several of these novel candidates will be discussed
A New Simulated Annealing Algorithm for the Multiple Sequence Alignment Problem: The approach of Polymers in a Random Media
We proposed a probabilistic algorithm to solve the Multiple Sequence
Alignment problem. The algorithm is a Simulated Annealing (SA) that exploits
the representation of the Multiple Alignment between sequences as a
directed polymer in dimensions. Within this representation we can easily
track the evolution in the configuration space of the alignment through local
moves of low computational cost. At variance with other probabilistic
algorithms proposed to solve this problem, our approach allows for the creation
and deletion of gaps without extra computational cost. The algorithm was tested
aligning proteins from the kinases family. When D=3 the results are consistent
with those obtained using a complete algorithm. For where the complete
algorithm fails, we show that our algorithm still converges to reasonable
alignments. Moreover, we study the space of solutions obtained and show that
depending on the number of sequences aligned the solutions are organized in
different ways, suggesting a possible source of errors for progressive
algorithms.Comment: 7 pages and 11 figure
Goodness-of-Fit Tests for Symmetric Stable Distributions -- Empirical Characteristic Function Approach
We consider goodness-of-fit tests of symmetric stable distributions based on
weighted integrals of the squared distance between the empirical characteristic
function of the standardized data and the characteristic function of the
standard symmetric stable distribution with the characteristic exponent
estimated from the data. We treat as an unknown parameter,
but for theoretical simplicity we also consider the case that is
fixed. For estimation of parameters and the standardization of data we use
maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) and an equivariant integrated squared error
estimator (EISE) which minimizes the weighted integral. We derive the
asymptotic covariance function of the characteristic function process with
parameters estimated by MLE and EISE. For the case of MLE, the eigenvalues of
the covariance function are numerically evaluated and asymptotic distribution
of the test statistic is obtained using complex integration. Simulation studies
show that the asymptotic distribution of the test statistics is very accurate.
We also present a formula of the asymptotic covariance function of the
characteristic function process with parameters estimated by an efficient
estimator for general distributions
Second moment closure analysis of the backstep flow database
A Second Moment Closure computation (SMC) is compared in detail with the Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data of Le and Moin for the backstep flow at Re = 5,000 in an attempt to understand why the intensity of the backflow and, consequently, the friction coefficient in the recirculation bubble are severely underestimated. The data show that this recirculation bubble is far from being laminar except in the very near wall layer. A novel 'differential a priori' procedure was used, in which the full transport equation for one isolated component of the Reynolds stress tensor was solved using DNS data as input. Conclusions are then different from what would have been deduced by comparing a full simulation to a DNS. One cause of discrepancy was traced back to insufficient transfer of energy to the normal stress by pressure strain, but was not cured. A significant finding, confirmed by the DNS data in the core region of a channel flow, is that the coefficient that controls destruction of dissipation, C epsilon(sub 2), should be decreased by a factor of 2 when production is vanishing. This is also the case in the recirculation bubble, and a new formulation has cured 25% of the backflow discrepancy
On the Disambiguation of Weighted Automata
We present a disambiguation algorithm for weighted automata. The algorithm
admits two main stages: a pre-disambiguation stage followed by a transition
removal stage. We give a detailed description of the algorithm and the proof of
its correctness. The algorithm is not applicable to all weighted automata but
we prove sufficient conditions for its applicability in the case of the
tropical semiring by introducing the *weak twins property*. In particular, the
algorithm can be used with all acyclic weighted automata, relevant to
applications. While disambiguation can sometimes be achieved using
determinization, our disambiguation algorithm in some cases can return a result
that is exponentially smaller than any equivalent deterministic automaton. We
also present some empirical evidence of the space benefits of disambiguation
over determinization in speech recognition and machine translation
applications
A Solvable Sequence Evolution Model and Genomic Correlations
We study a minimal model for genome evolution whose elementary processes are
single site mutation, duplication and deletion of sequence regions and
insertion of random segments. These processes are found to generate long-range
correlations in the composition of letters as long as the sequence length is
growing, i.e., the combined rates of duplications and insertions are higher
than the deletion rate. For constant sequence length, on the other hand, all
initial correlations decay exponentially. These results are obtained
analytically and by simulations. They are compared with the long-range
correlations observed in genomic DNA, and the implications for genome evolution
are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Genetic Correlations in Mutation Processes
We study the role of phylogenetic trees on correlations in mutation
processes. Generally, correlations decay exponentially with the generation
number. We find that two distinct regimes of behavior exist. For mutation rates
smaller than a critical rate, the underlying tree morphology is almost
irrelevant, while mutation rates higher than this critical rate lead to strong
tree-dependent correlations. We show analytically that identical critical
behavior underlies all multiple point correlations. This behavior generally
characterizes branching processes undergoing mutation.Comment: revtex, 8 pages, 2 fig
Polarization rotation via a monoclinic phase in the piezoelectric 92%PbZn1/3Nb2/3O3-8%PbTiO3
The origin of ultrahigh piezoelectricity in the relaxor ferroelectric
PbZn1/3Nb2/3O3-PbTiO3 was studied with an electric field applied along the
[001] direction. The zero-field rhombohedral R phase starts to follow the
direct polarization path to tetragonal symmetry via an intermediate monoclinic
M phase, but then jumps irreversibly to an alternate path involving a different
type of monoclinic distortion. Details of the structure and domain
configuration of this novel phase are described. This result suggests that
there is a nearby R-M phase boundary as found in the Pb(Ti,Zr)O3 system.Comment: REVTeX file. 4 pages. New version after referees' comment
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