(Almost) Square with the World

Memories of two traditions, both emphasizing being square with the world, are embedded in our own house in Manhattan, Kansas, finished in the spring of 1989. The most immediate tradition is that of the Midwest foursquare farmhouse..

Eschatology in the Johannine community: a study in diversity

The aim of this thesis is to study the diversity of eschatological emphases detected in the writings of the Johannine community. To do so, one must first decide which writings of the New Testament may properly be called Johannine.The thesis begins with a resume of previous studies into the relationships of the five books traditionally attributed to an author called John - Gospel, Letters, Apocalypse. The crucial issue in most of these studies has been whether or not the same individual could have written these books. Recent study of the Gospel, however, has strongly suggested community involvement in its production. The question raised, therefore, is whether the five books may have emerged within the one community. The initial hypothesis, based on a respect for the tradition, is that all five books emerged within the one early Christian community.This hypothesis is examined by a study of particular emphases of theological thought and expression. The community is considered in the first instance to be the community which produced the Gospel, so three theological emphases detected in the Gospel are examined in the other writings: (a) The Relation of the Father to the Son; (b) The Spirit of Truth; (c) The Command to Love. The conclusion is that while the Gospel and Letters almost certainly emerged in the one community, the Apocalypse, while having some contact with Johannine thought, cannot properly be considered a writing of the community.The thesis finally examines the eschatological expectation of the writers of the Gospel and Letters, suggesting the different emphases were mainly due to different purposes in writing. The expectation of a future Parousia was never denied, but the evangelist is concerned to challenge men to faith in the present, while the letter-writer's aim is to encourage the true believers in the light of the impending en

Social values in some novels of the 'Heimatkunst' movement

The thesis compares the values and attitudes promoted in the fiction of five authors associated with the 'Heimatkunst' movement. The introduction attempts a definition of the term 'Heimatkunst' and then proceeds to an examination of the theoretical writings of Adolf Bartels and Friedrich Lienhard, indicating the often considerable differences in attitude between the two critics and outlining such common ground as they share with each other and the "practitioners of the movement treated in this study. The thesis then moves to an analysis of single novels, where necessary relating these works to their authors' other writings. The novels chosen for analysis are Wilhelm von Polenz' Der Büttnerbauer, Adolf Bartels' Die Dithmarscher, Gustav Frenssen's Jörn Uhl, Ludwig Ganghofer's Der hohe Schein and Hermann Löns's Der Wehrwolf. These analyses confirm the existence of that common ground between the authors outlined in the introduction - their veneration of rural life and their suspicion of urban culture and values, their anti- intellectual bias, nationalist or racialist sympathies and their belief that contemporary ills may be cured or ameliorated by a return to the pre-industrial, nature-based values of the rural community. The manner, degree and consistency with which they commit themselves to these attitudes and views vary and there are certain preoccupations common to only some of the authors dealt with, although even these differing concerns can often be related to individual interpretations of shared premises. The thesis concludes with an examination of common stylistic and technical features of their fiction and the literary devices employed to direct the reader's sympathies

Re-conceiving Afghan cellular architecture for the reconstruction of rural schools

Afghanistan suffers from a quarter century of war that has resulted in a devastated infrastructure and a generation of Afghans who have lived without a local school. This paper presents an architectural design investigation that seeks ways of synthesizing traditional social-cultural and formalspatial attributes with refined material and construction capabilities becoming increasingly available worldwide. In the spirit of George Kubler's thesis of invention and variation, stabilized compressed brick construction and computer aided structural analysis are introduced as refinements within the Afghan building tradition

Batch kernel SOM and related Laplacian methods for social network analysis

Large graphs are natural mathematical models for describing the structure of the data in a wide variety of fields, such as web mining, social networks, information retrieval, biological networks, etc. For all these applications, automatic tools are required to get a synthetic view of the graph and to reach a good understanding of the underlying problem. In particular, discovering groups of tightly connected vertices and understanding the relations between those groups is very important in practice. This paper shows how a kernel version of the batch Self Organizing Map can be used to achieve these goals via kernels derived from the Laplacian matrix of the graph, especially when it is used in conjunction with more classical methods based on the spectral analysis of the graph. The proposed method is used to explore the structure of a medieval social network modeled through a weighted graph that has been directly built from a large corpus of agrarian contracts

The health profile of people living with Parkinson\u27s Disease managed in a comprehensive care setting

Background: Globally there are few reports of the impairments, disabilities and medications used in people living with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease. Caregiver characteristics and caregiver burden have seldom been reported. We examined the health status in a large cohort of people living with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers managed in a comprehensive health care setting. Methods/Design: A prospective, cross sectional analysis of impairments, disabilities and Parkinson’s disease medication use was conducted in a sample of 100 people with Parkinson’s disease rated I-IV on the modified Hoehn & Yahr scale. Participants were recruited from the Victorian Comprehensive Parkinson Program in Melbourne, Australia. Their caregivers were invited to provide their views on the burden of care, services provided and support received. Results: The severity of impairments and disabilities was strongly associated with disease duration (mean of 5.5 years). Those with long standing disease or more severe disease also used more Parkinson’s disease medications and participated in fewer social roles than people who were newly diagnosed or mildly affected. The severity of impairments was strongly correlated with limitations in performing activities of daily living. Limitations in performing daily activities were also found to be a significant contributing factor for health-related quality of life (PDQ-39 SI β=0.55, p=0.000; EQ-5D SI β=0.43, p=0.001). People with Parkinson’s disease lived at home with relatives. The average caregiver was a spouse or child providing approximately 3.5 hours of care per day, with the capacity to provide 9.4 hours per day and had provided care for four years. Additional support was high (63%) for 2.5 hours per day. Conclusion: The comprehensive care setting of this cohort describes a relatively benign condition despite a wide range of disease duration and severity. This report provides a baseline with which to compare other delivery models

Multi Megawatt Power System Analysis Report

Missions to the outer planets or to near-by planets requiring short times and/or increased payload carrying capability will benefit from nuclear power. A concept study was undertaken to evaluate options for a multi-megawatt power source for nuclear electric propulsion. The nominal electric power requirement was set at 15 MWe with an assumed mission profile of 120 days at full power, 60 days in hot standby, and another 120 days of full power, repeated several times for 7 years of service. Of the numerous options considered, two that appeared to have the greatest promise were a gas-cooled reactor based on the NERVA Derivative design, operating a closed cycle Brayton power conversion system; and a molten lithium-cooled reactor based on SP-100 technology, driving a boiling potassium Rankine power conversion system. This study examined the relative merits of these two systems, seeking to optimize the specific mass. Conclusions were that either concept appeared capable of approaching the specific mass goal of 3-5 kg/kWe estimated to be needed for this class of mission, though neither could be realized without substantial development in reactor fuels technology, thermal radiator mass efficiency, and power conversion and distribution electronics and systems capable of operating at high temperatures. Though the gas-Brayton systems showed an apparent advantage in specific mass, differences in the degree of conservatism inherent in the models used suggests expectations for the two approaches may be similar. Brayton systems eliminate the need to deal with two-phase flows in the microgravity environment of space

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin