A discussion of Adrio Konig's views on the evil one, evil and evil powers

Peer reviewedThe article investigates demonic evil as a historic theme in König’s theology, a theme that has been important to him but which, for the most part, has come to the fore indirectly. His high regard for Scripture and of what is said in the Bible about God and Jesus has also led him to take references to demonic powers seriously. Implications of his approach to these issues and his theology on the subject, as it has grown over three decades, are discussed. Some biographical data are linked to his theological viewpoints on these issues.Church History Society of Southern Afric

Patterns of Striped order in the Classical Lattice Coulomb Gas

We obtain via Monte Carlo simulations the low temperature charge configurations in the lattice Coulomb gas on square lattices for charge filling ratio $f$ in the range $1/3 < f < 1/2$. We find a simple regularity in the low temperature charge configurations which consist of a suitable periodic combination of a few basic striped patterns characterized by the existence of partially filled diagonal channels. In general there exist two separate transitions where the lower temperature transition ($T_p$) corresponds to the freezing of charges within the partially filled channels. $T_p$ is found to be sensitively dependent on $f$ through the charge number density $\nu = p_{1}/q_{1}$ within the channels.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure

Scheduling with genetic algorithms

In many domains, scheduling a sequence of jobs is an important function contributing to the overall efficiency of the operation. At Boeing, we develop schedules for many different domains, including assembly of military and commercial aircraft, weapons systems, and space vehicles. Boeing is under contract to develop scheduling systems for the Space Station Payload Planning System (PPS) and Payload Operations and Integration Center (POIC). These applications require that we respect certain sequencing restrictions among the jobs to be scheduled while at the same time assigning resources to the jobs. We call this general problem scheduling and resource allocation. Genetic algorithms (GA's) offer a search method that uses a population of solutions and benefits from intrinsic parallelism to search the problem space rapidly, producing near-optimal solutions. Good intermediate solutions are probabalistically recombined to produce better offspring (based upon some application specific measure of solution fitness, e.g., minimum flowtime, or schedule completeness). Also, at any point in the search, any intermediate solution can be accepted as a final solution; allowing the search to proceed longer usually produces a better solution while terminating the search at virtually any time may yield an acceptable solution. Many processes are constrained by restrictions of sequence among the individual jobs. For a specific job, other jobs must be completed beforehand. While there are obviously many other constraints on processes, it is these on which we focussed for this research: how to allocate crews to jobs while satisfying job precedence requirements and personnel, and tooling and fixture (or, more generally, resource) requirements

Northern Bobwhite and Fire: A Review and Synthesis

Our understanding of the relationship between northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus; hereafter, bobwhite) and fire began with Herbert Stoddard’s work in the early 20th century. Research on the topic has continued, but our application of fire is deeply rooted in Stoddard’s work, even as it has become evident that fire regimes must be adapted to variable environmental conditions that are evolving with a changing landscape and climate. A comprehensive review and synthesis of the literature on this topic would help formalize research advancements since Stoddard and identify knowledge gaps for future research. Results from experiments suggest fire creates favorable local habitat conditions for bobwhite such as plant composition, bare ground, and plant structure. Frequent prescribed fire is closely tied to where bobwhite populations are at their greatest (e.g., Red Hills region of Georgia and Florida, USA). However, an empirical gap exists between patch-level conditions and the bobwhite-landscape ecology interface. For example, it is well established that a 2-year fire return interval in pine savanna ecosystems with fertile soil is best for bobwhite. But causal evidence is limited for areas of different soil types, precipitation, and past land use across the bobwhite range. We review the extant literature describing prescribed fire use for bobwhite management, focusing on documented effects of fire on life-history characteristics of bobwhite under different environmental conditions. Habitat outcomes of fire management depend on fire frequency, seasonality, scale, and interaction with other management, and different strategies should be employed depending on the environment and desired effects. Adaptive management strategies will be necessary to address the challenges of rising temperatures associated with a changing climate, which are likely to alter the conditions under which burns occur and increase the difficulty of meeting basic burn criteria. Positive public attitudes toward prescribed fire will be key to developing a policy and management framework that supports efficient prescribed fire application. Our review elucidates range-wide processes and patterns to better inform the site-specific application of fire

Bosonization in d=2 from finite chiral determinants with a Gauss decomposition

We show how to bosonize two-dimensional non-abelian models using finite chiral determinants calculated from a Gauss decomposition. The calculation is quite straightforward and hardly more involved than for the abelian case. In particular, the counterterm $A\bar A$, which is normally motivated from gauge invariance and then added by hand, appears naturally in this approach.Comment: 4 pages, Revte